GAA19CA053 · Piper PA24 250
Piper PA24 250 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Austin Executive Airport (EDC) to Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA053
- 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 PA24 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N3214P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Executive Airport (EDC), Austin, TXTo Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN), Texico, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1958)
- 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 exhaustion
- 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, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, the day before the accident flight, he had fully refueled the airplane’s fuel tanks (60 gallons of fuel), conducted a run-up of the engine, and conducted a local flight around the pattern to troubleshoot an electrical issue that was later resolved.
The pilot reported that, on the day of the accident, during the preflight inspection for the cross-country flight, the airplane was only "two gallons shy of full." About 2.5 hours into the flight, after switching the fuel tanks multiple times en route, he switched to the left main fuel tank to prepare for landing. He added that, about 4 miles south of the destination airport, the engine lost power, the airplane was "too low," and he set up to land on a nearby road. The airplane landed with the gear retracted and struck multiple signs before coming to rest.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing, fuselage, and empennage.
During a postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector, both fuel tanks were found empty, and no evidence of fuel leakage was found at the accident site.
During a telephone conversation, the pilot reported that the total flight time the day of the accident was about 3.1 hours and that he was not aware of any preaccident mechanical failures. He estimated that the fuel burn was about 14 gallons per hour and that, during the accident flight, there was about a 17-knot headwind.
The Pilot’s Operating Handbook for the airplane stated that, while at 75% power, the airplane has about 3.7 hours of fuel endurance. Given the evidence, it is likely that the pilot did not ensure that there was adequate fuel onboard for the accident flight, which led to fuel exhaustion and a total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA053
- Event ID
- 20181106X01336
- Case number
- GAA19CA053
- 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, coordinates. 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: cc4b5eb290c1e31a5795c01d2553744d2c3f9c89f6d09eef77ff2b1c3153b1e8; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:24:56.268Z.