GAA16CA020 · Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT
Pacific Air Center Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From El Paso International Airport (ELP) to Jasper County Airport Bell Field (JAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA020
- 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
Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N4151Q
- Operator
- Pacific Air Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TXTo Jasper County Airport Bell Field (JAS), Jasper, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 1992)
- 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 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during a night cross county flight, the first airport he landed at did not have fuel. He departed the airport for another airport that did have fuel. While en route, he stated that "the engine spluttered and failed to restart even after switching tanks and trying all emergency check list procedures." The pilot ditched the airplane in a lake; the occupants egressed from the airplane, and swam to shore without further incident. Upon recovery from the lake, the airplane had substantial damage to the fuselage.
The assigned Federal Aviation Administration aviation safety inspector reported that when the airplane recovery personnel examined the airplane after the recovery from the lake, only one fuel tank had fuel located inside, approximately one quart.
The pilot reported there were no pre-impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and ditching the airplane in a lake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA020
- Event ID
- 20151020X62601
- Case number
- GAA16CA020
- 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, coordinates. 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: d40dc5106b477163bffd4002dcdd49fc2476264e9a9effa455f51825636ba751; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:54:26.118Z.