WPR15LA240 · Stinson SR 9B
Stinson SR 9B · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA240
- 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
Stinson SR 9B
- Aircraft type
- Stinson SR-9
- 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
- N17154
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 78 years (built 1937)
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
The private pilot stated that, after about 30 minutes airborne on the local flight, the engine experienced a partial loss of power and the airplane began to lose altitude. The pilot switched the fuel selector to the other fuel tank and made a forced landing onto a highway. After touching down on the highway, the engine regained power and the pilot departed again; but shortly thereafter, the engine experienced a total loss of power. During the subsequent off-airport landing in a field, the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted.
The pilot initially reported that he departed with about 20 gallons of fuel on board but was unsure of the exact quantity. He later stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane, and that the loss of power was likely the result of fuel starvation or exhaustion. During postaccident examination, there was no odor of fuel present around the wreckage and no evidence of fuel in the wing tanks or the fuel lines.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot’s failure to verify the fuel quantity before the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA240
- Event ID
- 20150814X04638
- Case number
- WPR15LA240
- 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: 826595e94757c812aa4d3a1cd3cdcc41eab9f59a60008d3f8704c46e2a621d8a; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:40:15.354Z.