CEN16LA053 · Pipistrel VIRUS
Pipistrel VIRUS · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
From Sayre Municipal Airport (3O4) to Centennial Airport (KAPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA053
- 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
Pipistrel VIRUS
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel VIRUS
- Category
- Glider
- 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
- N145VS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sayre Municipal Airport (3O4), Sayre, OKTo Centennial Airport (KAPA), Denver, CO
- 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
- Approach
- 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 contamination
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, while en route to the destination airport, he noted that the right tank's fuel level was not changing and that it did not appear that fuel was draining from the right tank. The fuel remaining in the left fuel tank was not adequate to complete the planned flight. The pilot chose to divert to a closer airport, and while he was preparing to land, the engine lost power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field, during which the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted.
Contaminants consistent with insects and leaves were recovered from the right fuel tank and fuel lines. The contamination had prevented the fuel from flowing from the right fuel tank to the engine and resulted in the loss of engine power. No other anomalies were noted that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of contamination in the right fuel tank and fuel lines, which prevented fuel from flowing to the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA053
- Event ID
- 20151205X73626
- Case number
- CEN16LA053
- 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 2015-12-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 54ef09536618a42ead13fad65ba48739d67d83930a8505b1d946c3ca0f45fff7; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:00:42.614Z.