CEN17LA036 · Stinson L 5
Stinson L 5 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI) to San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA036
- 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
Stinson L 5
- Aircraft type
- Stinson L-5
- 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
- N4252K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI), San Marcos, TXTo San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI), San Marcos, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 72 years (built 1944)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 reported that the airplane bounced while landing on the runway, so he conducted a go-around. During climbout, the engine lost power at 500 ft above ground level. The pilot turned the airplane to land on another runway; however, the airplane was not able to reach the runway, so he landed on wet grass between the runways. Upon touchdown, the left main landing gear collapsed when it dug into the soft terrain, and the airplane nosed over.
The pilot reported that, for the entire flight, he had the fuel selector positioned on the left tank. The pilot added that the airplane usually burned between 9 and 10 gallons of fuel per hour. Therefore, given the flight was about 1 hour 22 minutes long and the tank held 15 gallons of usable fuel, the left tank probably contained about 2 to 3 gallons of usable fuel at the time of the accident. The right fuel tank was full.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that there was no fuel in the fuel line leading into the engine. The position of the fuel pick-up line in the wing would have allowed the fuel in the wing to unport during the climbing turn. Given the low fuel level in the selected left fuel tank, it is likely that the fuel supply to the engine was interrupted during the climbing turn. If the pilot had selected the full right fuel tank, the loss of power would likely not have occurred.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management before landing, which resulted in fuel starvation and the subsequent total loss of engine power during a subsequent go-around when the fuel became unported during the climbing turn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA036
- Event ID
- 20161107X41554
- Case number
- CEN17LA036
- 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: 407885108f9db676610714dde21f853e114c73cd95a6b2145f436f361b366245; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:48:50.038Z.