CEN16LA102 · Piper PA31
Piper PA31 · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO) to Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA102
- 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
Piper PA31
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA31
- 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
- N997DN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO), Denton, TXTo Denton Enterprise Airport (DTO), Denton, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, during the postmaintenance test flight, the right engine surged and then behaved consistent with a fuel flow issue. The right engine subsequently lost power, and the pilot prepared to return to the airport. However, before the pilot could secure the right engine, the left engine started to surge and then lost power. The pilot conducted a forced landing to a field, during which both wings and the engine nacelles sustained substantial damage.
Although a fuel smell was present on scene, there was no visual evidence of fuel in the fuel tanks or in the field. Only a quart of fuel was recovered from the left fuel tank. Further examination of the airframe and fuel system revealed that the fuel tanks were not compromised, and no mechanical anomalies with the airframe, engine, or the fuel system were found that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that there should have been about 120 gallons of fuel on board at the time of departure. Additionally, a fuel receipt confirmed that 99.36 gallons of fuel had been added to the fuel tanks before a 36-minute maintenance engine test run conducted 3 days before the accident flight. No other flights were conducted between the test run and the accident flight, which the engine data monitor indicated was about 30 minutes long.
Based upon calibrations set by the operator, the engine data showed that the engines consumed about 5.6 gallons of fuel during the test run and 19.2 gallons of fuel during the accident flight. Performance information from the manufacturer indicated that the engines should have burned between 10 and 18 gallons of fuel during the test run and between 27 and 50 gallons of fuel during the accident flight. Although it is possible the discrepancy between the recorded fuel consumption and the fuel consumption calculations was due to the operator setting the engine data monitor's calibrations incorrectly, it could not be determined when or by whom the calibrations were set. The absence of fuel on-scene and the loss of engine power are consistent with fuel exhaustion; however, the investigation was unable to determine why there was no fuel on board at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA102
- Event ID
- 20160210X50052
- Case number
- CEN16LA102
- 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: 61ddd580e99595e7559a698b8768a2d168262a4d431cdce5a046f644c0a6f57f; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:09:05.930Z.