CEN16LA380 · Piper PA 30
Piper PA 30 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Marfa Municipal Airport (KMRF) to Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA380
- 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 PA 30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7663Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marfa Municipal Airport (KMRF), Marfa, TXTo Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL), Mineral Wells, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1965)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 airline transport pilot reported that, before the flight preceding the accident flight, he added 19 gallons of fuel to the auxiliary and main fuel tanks. He added that he did not add fuel to the tip tanks and that he had used all the fuel in those tanks during the flight before the accident flight. The pilot then departed for the accident flight. He stated that, during the flight, he only used the auxiliary and main fuel tanks and that, while on final approach for landing, he switched from the auxiliary to the main fuel tanks for landing. Shortly thereafter, the right engine lost power and then the left engine lost power. The pilot subsequently conducted a forced landing to a road and a field, during which the fuselage and wings were crushed, the empennage was partially separated from the fuselage, and the pilot and one passenger sustained serious injuries.
The examination of both engines, fuel tanks, and related fuel systems revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. One gallon of fuel was recovered from the right main tank fuel lines, and 3 gallons of fuel were recovered from the left auxiliary tank. Although no fuel was recovered from the tip fuel tanks, damage signatures on both tip fuel tanks were consistent with both tanks being full of fuel at the time of the accident. Given this evidence, it is likely that pilot did not use the tip fuel tanks during the previous flight despite believing that he had done so and instead used the main and auxiliary fuel tanks. The pilot's fuel mismanagement resulted in fuel starvation to both engines and their subsequent loss of engine power while on final approach to the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's fuel mismanagement, which resulted in fuel starvation to both engines and their subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA380
- Event ID
- 20160922X85738
- Case number
- CEN16LA380
- 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 2016-09-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d535f515cd02424ed00f83ad9143e80efda68f44a07657bcb8bc3f096ae7df9b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:18:12.118Z.