CEN15LA355 · World Aircraft Co SPIRIT
World Aircraft Co SPIRIT · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
From Kickapoo Downtown Airport (CWC) to Pecan Plantation Airport (0TX1)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA355
- 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
World Aircraft Co SPIRIT
- Aircraft type
- World SPIRIT
- 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
- N65XT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kickapoo Downtown Airport (CWC), Wichita Falls, TXTo Pecan Plantation Airport (0TX1), Granbury, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2011)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, when the airplane was about 4 miles from the airport, he made a series of prolonged left turns at cruise altitude to allow another airplane that was in the area to land at the airport. After making the left turns, the engine experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot performed a forced landing on a tall grass field after being unable to restart the engine. The pilot was unable to slow the airplane with full application of wheel brakes due to the tall grass, and the airplane impacted a barbed wire fence and then came to rest.
Examination of the wreckage showed that the fuel system design did not allow for the equalization of fuel between the fuel tanks, which led to the engine being starved of fuel following the sustained left turns. The pilot did not use the fuel boost pump while troubleshooting the loss of engine power, which would have provided a positive fuel flow/pressure to the engine and resolved the fuel starvation condition. Following the postaccident examination of the airplane, the airplane manufacturer modified the fuel system to allow for the equalization of fuel between the fuel tanks.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to use the fuel boost pump following the loss of engine power and the fuel system’s inadequate design, which did not allow for equalization of fuel between the fuel tanks and led to a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA355
- Event ID
- 20150812X62327
- Case number
- CEN15LA355
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7da5bae60126b78772ef506cb8f29f16974a2244697519bd0599dc57dca7fbf6; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:39:48.707Z.