ERA16LA090 · Beech A23 A
Beech A23 A · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Meadowlake Airport (12TN) to Meadowlake Airport (12TN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA090
- 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 A23 A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N3680Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Meadowlake Airport (12TN), Kingston, TNTo Meadowlake Airport (12TN), Kingston, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1967)
- 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 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot performed maintenance on the airplane about 2 weeks before the accident, which included replacing the fuel tank cap O-rings and draining the fuel from the left tank and putting it in the right fuel tank in order to clear debris from the left tank sump valve. Following that work, the pilot believed that the airplane's right fuel tank contained about 28 gallons of fuel and the left fuel tank contained about 1.5 gallons. On the morning of the accident flight, he performed a preflight inspection of the airplane but could not recall if he visually verified the fuel quantity in each tank. After flying around the local area for about an hour with the fuel selector positioned to the right fuel tank, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot performed a forced landing, during which the airplane was substantially damaged.
The pilot reported that he kept the fuel selector positioned to the right fuel tank for the entirety of the flight and did not select the left fuel tank after the loss of engine power because he believed it only contained 1.5 gallons of fuel. Examination of the airplane after the accident revealed that the fuel selector was in the right fuel tank position, both fuel tanks were intact, and the right fuel tank was empty. The left tank contained about 7 gallons of fuel. A cursory postaccident examination of the engine found no evidence of any mechanical deficiencies. Given that the pilot used the right fuel tank for the entirety of the flight and that the right fuel tank was found intact and empty after the accident, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection and fuel planning and his improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA090
- Event ID
- 20160116X22241
- Case number
- ERA16LA090
- 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: 8d36496a03c989ff58e4435fe365e131e1953408909686c5bca598aeb7172065; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:05:34.422Z.