WPR15LA155 · Cessna 140 G
Cessna 140 G · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (MFR) to Sisters Eagle Air Airport (6K5)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA155
- 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
Cessna 140 G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N2514N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (MFR), Medford, ORTo Sisters Eagle Air Airport (6K5), Sisters, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a cross-country flight, at a cruise altitude of about 7,500 ft mean sea level (msl), the airline transport pilot reported that the engine experienced a total loss of power after he allowed the left wing fuel tank to run empty. He switched fuel tanks but was unable to restart the engine. The pilot realized that the airplane was not within gliding distance of the nearest airport and decided to conduct a forced landing on a nearby road. During the landing roll, the airplane struck several trees and sustained substantial damage.
Postaccident examination of the airplane established continuity of the fuel system with no anomalies observed. The left wing fuel tank was empty, and the right wing fuel tank was nearly full. A test run of the engine was conducted using the fuel from the right tank. The engine operated normally with no anomalies observed, and the reason for the pilot's inability to restart the engine following the loss of power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inability to restart the engine for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine and fuel system revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA155
- Event ID
- 20150501X91429
- Case number
- WPR15LA155
- 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 2015-05-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c4cf37dfed001fd8fc320ad280fda8fc43a65cd2eea79e4e30a7812dc12446be; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:16:30.463Z.