WPR20LA249 · North American NAVION
North American NAVION · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Strawberry Valley Estates Airport (UT24) to Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA249
- 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
- 2 · 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
North American NAVION
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N225HJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Strawberry Valley Estates Airport (UT24), Alton, UTTo Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tower/antenna (incl guy wires)
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and pilot-rated passenger departed from Strawberry Valley Estates Airport (UT24), Alton, Utah, on a cross-country flight. The airplane flew in a direction that was consistent with a heading toward their planned destination, Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, Utah. As the airplane neared its destination, witnesses heard the pilot make a distress call indicating that the airplane was out of gas and that he was trying to make a forced landing in a field. Other witnesses observed the airplane descending and then impacting terrain. Shortly thereafter, a nearby communications tower collapsed.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no preimpact malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane’s main fuel tanks held 20 gallons each with a total of 39.5 gallons of usable fuel. According to a friend of the pilot, the airplane was fueled at North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, Nevada, on the day before the accident. The airplane then departed VGT and flew two flights with a total time of about 1 hour 55 minutes. On the day of the accident, the airplane departed UT24, which was about 30 miles (and about 20 minutes of flying time) from the last known point of contact from the previous day. The accident flight’s duration was about 31 minutes. The airplane’s distance traveled since fueling was consistent with consuming the usable fuel in the main fuel tanks. Thus, the airplane’s fuel load at the time of departure from UT24 was insufficient to complete the planned flight to CDC, and a total loss of engine power ensued.
Additionally, examination of the airplane wreckage at the accident site revealed a support guy wire from the communications tower wrapped around the front of the airplane. Thus, while attempting the forced landing, the pilot failed to see and avoid the communications tower and subsequently struck the guy wire.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s improper fuel planning and failure to see and avoid the communications tower support guy wire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA249
- Event ID
- 20200802X25022
- Case number
- WPR20LA249
- 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, cause areas. 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: cbf0b27720253c836d98f105bd0f60ab8356f0666c570d8527a8ea1747aeae4c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:17:54.914Z.