WPR18TA122 · Wilhelm PUSLAR III
Wilhelm PUSLAR III · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM) to Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18TA122
- 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
Wilhelm PUSLAR III
- Aircraft type
- Wilhelm PUSLAR
- 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
- N332RP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM), Palm Springs, CATo Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM), Palm Springs, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 1999)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after about 30 minutes of flight, the engine suddenly lost total power. He attempted to start the engine several times; however, it would not sustain power. The pilot performed a forced landing to desert terrain, during which the airplane impacted a small berm, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. Examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel selector was positioned on the left fuel tank, which contained no fuel. The fuel quantity gauge indicated that the left fuel tank was empty, and the right fuel tank was about 1/4 full. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane and stated that if he had "read the checklist," he might have been able to restart the engine. It is likely that the pilot's mismanagement of the fuel during the flight resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to perform the loss of engine power emergency procedures, which likely would have restored engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18TA122
- Event ID
- 20180418X54541
- Case number
- WPR18TA122
- 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: b80552f3ca1eb374bedf9d339d9632c7b1254fd21eb9a399aa8cbf86a4dea7f6; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:52:13.712Z.