WPR17LA011 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Hanford Municipal Airport (HJO) to Harris Ranch Airport (3O8)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA011
- 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
Mooney M20J
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N201EU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hanford Municipal Airport (HJO), Hanford, CATo Harris Ranch Airport (3O8), Coalinga, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1977)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a local flight when the engine experienced a partial loss of power. The pilot stated that he switched the fuel selector from the right to the left tank, applied full throttle, set the mixture control to full rich, and extended the wing flaps. The engine seemed to continue running during the forced landing. The airplane impacted a stand of almond trees and came to rest in a nose-down attitude about 1 1/2 miles from the destination.
The pilot reported no mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation and stated that there was enough fuel to get to the destination, "but not all in the tank that was being drawn from."
A postaccident examination revealed that the right wing tank, which was undamaged, was void of any usable fuel; about 4 ounces of fuel was drained from the tank. Also, there was no evidence of a fuel leak from either wing tank. The fuel selector was observed positioned to draw fuel from the left tank, which contained about 7 gallons of fuel. Further examination revealed that the fuel control unit's inlet finger strainer was clean and free of obstructions. Additionally, the fuel supply line contained a small amount of clean, blue-colored fuel when disconnected. No water or particulate contaminates were detected in the fuel system.
A postaccident engine run revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The partial loss of engine power was likely due to the pilot's improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in fuel starvation to the engine after all of the usable fuel in the right wing tank had been consumed.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to the pilot's improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA011
- Event ID
- 20161023X42431
- Case number
- WPR17LA011
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-10-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a160d174134d5cb3414d898e7c0e785077d49c9974346f78270d57317f8d08ba; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:45:39.364Z.