CEN17LA265 · Cubcrafters Inc CC11-160
Cubcrafters Inc CC11-160 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Aberdeen Regional Airport (ABR) to Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA265
- 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
Cubcrafters Inc CC11-160
- Aircraft type
- Cubcrafters CC11
- 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
- N111JW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aberdeen Regional Airport (ABR), Aberdeen, SDTo Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2015)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal flight and reported that the airplane had been "topped off" before takeoff. Due to a stronger-than-anticipated headwind en route, he decided to divert to an intermediate airport to add fuel so that the airplane would have an adequate fuel reserve. Shortly afterward, while the airplane was in cruise flight, the engine "abruptly stopped, [with] no coughing or sputtering." The pilot attempted to determine the cause of the problem. He noted that the fuel selector was set for both tanks and that each tank was about one-quarter full. The pilot also attempted to restart the engine but was not successful; as a result, he executed a forced landing to an open field. The pilot noted that the airplane's airspeed might have decayed on final approach to the field, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and hard landing.
Data from the airplane's avionics system indicated that engine performance was normal until about 15 minutes before the accident. At that time, the fuel flow varied over a 4-minute period. Afterward, the fuel flow returned to normal, and the engine's performance appeared stable. However, about 5 minutes before the accident, the fuel flow began to vary again and ultimately decreased to zero. The corresponding engine parameters also decreased at that time, which was consistent with a loss of power.
The engine data revealed that a loss of fuel flow to the engine precipitated the loss of power. However, a postaccident examination and a test run of the engine did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a loss of engine power. Specifically, the engine test run demonstrated operation of the engine, and no airframe fuel system obstructions or evidence of fuel leakage were observed. In addition, the fuel consumption for the accident flight was about one-half of the total usable fuel capacity, which excluded fuel exhaustion as a cause for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Fuel starvation and a subsequent loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because a postaccident examination and a test run of the engine did not reveal any anomalies. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed after the loss of engine power, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA265
- Event ID
- 20170712X21227
- Case number
- CEN17LA265
- 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: 7165ed0cfadf935990867a7c25efca847d288249e82444648691c7e4bdcfa5c4; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:32:11.140Z.