CEN22LA189 · Raytheon Aircraft Company A36
Raytheon Aircraft Company A36 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Majors Airport (GVT) to Brownwood Regional Airport (BWD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA189
- 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
Raytheon Aircraft Company A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N47JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Majors Airport (GVT), Greenville, TXTo Brownwood Regional Airport (BWD), Brownwood, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1998)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed with “just over half a tank of fuel in each tank,” which matched the indications on the fuel gauges. He reported that he decided not to “top off” the fuel tanks for the flight of about one hour and twenty-minutes as he had about 40 gallons of fuel on board. The pilot reported that the takeoff and en route portions of the flight were normal. As the airplane descended to 6,000 ft above mean seal level, and with the destination airport in sight, the engine lost power. The pilot “immediately pulled the yoke back to best glide,” selected a grass field for the landing, and began the engine out checklist. The pilot reported that he switched fuel tanks during the engine out procedure. After he completed the checklist twice, with no success at restarting the engine, he maneuvered the airplane and performed a forced landing to a field. During the forced landing, the nose gear collapsed, and the right wing sustained substantial damage.
During a postaccident examination, no fuel was found in the right fuel tank and about 5.5 gallons of fuel was found in the left fuel tank (per the airframe manufacturer, 3 gallons in each fuel tank is classified as unusable). Both fuel tanks were found intact, along with the airframe and engine fuel lines. Both fuel tank caps appeared normal and were found installed properly. There was no evidence of a fuel leak or spillage on the airframe or at the accident site. There were no odors of fuel at the accident site. The fuel tank selector was found at the right fuel tank position. The fuel line to the fuel pressure regulator and the fuel injection distribution manifold was opened and there was no visible fuel found in the line. The investigation could not determine the amount of fuel onboard before the accident flight. Based on the available evidence, it is likely the engine lost power due to the low level of fuel available in the right fuel tank due to the pilot’s improper fuel management.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly manage fuel while enroute, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA189
- Event ID
- 20220503105034
- Case number
- CEN22LA189
- 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: cee6653e45999b44591842ecc09cc1f45a6aec0f0986648128c92c1bf4990c37; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:11:58.185Z.