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CEN22LA180 · Globe GC-1B

14 Apr 2022 · Huntsville, TX, United States

Globe GC-1B · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb

From Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport (CXO) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
CEN22LA180
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
0
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

Globe GC-1B

Aircraft type
Globe GC-1
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
N78096
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport (CXO), Conroe, TXTo not recorded
Aircraft age
About 76 years (built 1946)
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 starvation
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

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot reported that in cruise flight he positioned the fuel selector to the right auxiliary fuel tank and set a timer for 20 minutes. He practiced private pilot maneuvers and then proceeded to a nearby airport for touch-and-go landings. He did not switch the fuel selector back to the main fuel tank because he did not notice the timer. The pilot completed one touch-and-go landing and during the initial climb, the engine experienced a total loss of power. He pitched the nose of the airplane down for a forced landing and the engine regained power momentarily. The engine again experienced a loss of power, the airplane stalled, and impacted the ground adjacent to the runway resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. He stated that he should have refueled the airplane before the flight, so he did not have to worry about fuel management.

Probable cause

The pilot’s inadequate fuel management which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN22LA180
Event ID
20220421104984
Case number
CEN22LA180
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: 5a5eef399347910b9805edf936a2923d2acc196cd841e0933f267beb6211138b; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:09:47.011Z.