WPR15LA089 · Cirrus SR22
The Flight Academy Cirrus SR22 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY) to Maui, HI
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA089
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cirrus SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N7YT
- Operator
- The Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY), Tracy, CATo Maui, HI
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2015)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Fuel starvation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the transpacific flight, he was unable to transfer fuel from the aft auxiliary fuel tank to the main fuel tanks. Despite multiple attempts to troubleshoot the fuel system issue, he was unable to correct the situation. After transferring fuel from the forward auxiliary fuel tank to both main fuel tanks, he estimated that there was only enough fuel in the main tanks to reach within about 200 miles of land, so he decided to divert to a nearby cruise ship. Once the airplane was in the immediate vicinity of the cruise ship, the pilot activated the airplane's parachute system, the parachute deployed, and the airplane descended under the canopy into the ocean. The pilot immediately exited the airplane and inflated an emergency life raft; he was recovered from the water a short time later. The airplane subsequently became submerged in the water and was not recovered. The reason for the pilot's inability to transfer fuel from the aft auxiliary fuel tank to the main fuel tanks could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to transfer fuel from the aft auxiliary fuel tank to the main fuel tanks for reasons that could not be determined because the airplane was ditched and not recovered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA089
- Event ID
- 20150126X84741
- Case number
- WPR15LA089
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-01-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 505b503cc49a90449906a8d8504adee16640ee8f11adb5a2da997fe8c2cb36d9; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:03:09.153Z.