CEN20LA252 · Piper PA28R 201
Rocky Mountain Flight School Piper PA28R 201 · Accident: fuel related during initial climb
From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA252
- 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 PA28R 201
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N811MS
- Operator
- Rocky Mountain Flight School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM), Fort Morgan, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1989)
- 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 related
- 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 › Action/decision
- 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
During climbout after a touch-and-go landing maneuver, the pilot reported that the engine hesitated. Suspecting a fuel issue, the pilot attempted to switch fuel tanks, but was unable to reach the fuel selector because the shoulder harness would not release. He abandoned attempts to switch fuel tanks and turned toward flat terrain for a forced landing. The airplane landed in a field adjacent to a tree line, resulting in substantial damage to the left wing.
Examination of the engine, throttle and mixture controls, and fuel distribution system did not reveal any pre-impact anomalies. About 4.25 total gallons of fuel were drained from the fuel tanks; 4 gallons from the left tank and .25 gallons from the right tank. The airplane flight manual stated that unusable fuel for the airplane is 5 total gallons, 2.5 gallons in each tank for critical flight conditions. It is likely that the reported engine hesitation after takeoff was due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power during climbout due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA252
- Event ID
- 20200627X33919
- Case number
- CEN20LA252
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-06-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3b0872967616348a1bd10e494821385218ac54fd59b60336aae3a909c724c1c2; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:57:10.361Z.