CEN20LA370 · Piper PA24 250
Piper PA24 250 · Accident: fuel exhaustion during takeoff
From Coulter Field (CFD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA370
- 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
- 3 · 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
- N7469P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coulter Field (CFD), Bryan, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1961)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taking three passengers for a local sightseeing flight. A security video at the airport showed the airplane took off from runway 15. There were no video recordings of or witnesses to the accident. The airplane wreckage was located on a flat grass field off of the departure end of runway 15 on airport property and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, both wings, and the empennage.
An onsite examination of the airframe found the fuel tank selector handle in the right main position. The right main fuel cell was not damaged and did not contain fuel; however, fuel was likely available in the other three fuel tanks. Rotational signatures on the propeller were consistent with it not being driven at the time of impact. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Toxicology testing showed that the pilot had used the allergy medication cetirizine. Cetirizine may sometimes cause drowsiness, but whether cetirizine effects contributed to the accident could not be determined.
Based upon the available evidence, the lack of damage to the propeller is consistent with a loss of engine power and it is likely that the engine lost power shortly after takeoff. The reason for the loss of engine power was likely due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power on takeoff due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA370
- Event ID
- 20200830X64312
- Case number
- CEN20LA370
- 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: 266b07e6dc19a96b447d0121090f9926f8541f895929e8eb9f0a2a6c18349e60; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:18:57.416Z.