CEN20LA265 · Titan TITAN TORNADO
Titan TITAN TORNADO · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Lecompte, LA to Lecompte, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA265
- 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
Titan TITAN TORNADO
- Aircraft type
- Titan TORNADO
- 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
- N5082N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lecompte, LATo Lecompte, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot departed for a local, personal flight with one passenger onboard. The student reported that the engine stopped producing power and that he tried to restart it without success. The student had no further recollection of events. A witness reported hearing the airplane having engine “trouble” and subsequently seeing it impact a cornfield, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The propeller could be rotated by hand, and the engine was not was not mechanically bound. The fuel tank was empty and 1/4 cup of fuel was drained from the sump drain valve. No fuel was found in the fuel bowl. Given the evidence, it is likely the engine experienced a total loss of power due to fuel exhaustion. It is likely that the student failed to verify sufficient fuel was onboard for the flight. The oil dipstick was dry, and only five drops of oil were drained from the bottom drain valve. However, the airplane had been in a steep, nose-down attitude for 2 weeks, which could have resulted in oil going into a sump or hidden cavity.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to ensure sufficient fuel onboard, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA265
- Event ID
- 20200702X02629
- Case number
- CEN20LA265
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-07-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6d4995f23651a0b8f4e158251f3d0fe5ee1b37e2e1963d3f7835117a50c60c1f; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:59:42.939Z.