CEN16LA069 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Watertown Municipal Airport (RYV) to Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA069
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N5PF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Watertown Municipal Airport (RYV), Watertown, WITo Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW), Kenosha, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2006)
- 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- 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 private pilot had spent several hours flying practice instrument approaches to various airports. He stated that he became distracted and failed to monitor the airplane's fuel state. His normal habit was to alternate between the airplane's wing fuel tanks every 30 minutes; however, he did not perform this action during the last hour of the accident flight. Shortly after takeoff to return to his home airport in night visual meteorological conditions, the airplane's engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot turned back toward the departure airport, but the airplane did not have sufficient altitude to complete a power-off glide to the runway. The pilot stated that he did not switch the airplane's fuel selector following the loss of engine power. About 344 ft above ground level, the pilot activated the airplane's airframe parachute system. The low-altitude activation resulted in an incomplete deployment of the parachute and a nose-down impact with the ground, during which the pilot sustained serious injury.
The pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Postaccident examination revealed that the airplane's fuel system was intact. The right wing tank, which was selected, contained about 21 oz of fuel, and the left wing tank contained about 22 gallons. Therefore, the total loss of engine power was consistent with fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to switch fuel tanks after the engine lost power, and his delayed decision to activate the airframe parachute system, which resulted in his serious injury due to incomplete deployment of the system and the airplane’s improper attitude upon touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA069
- Event ID
- 20151228X25725
- Case number
- CEN16LA069
- 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: 86473686c08b5d848dd38ea30e285cbb247753d667a2e6fab2e2225490e6e275; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:03:27.247Z.