CEN22LA229 · Fahey William J CH750 CRUZER
Fahey William J CH750 CRUZER · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA229
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Fahey William J CH750 CRUZER
- Aircraft type
- Fahey William CH750
- 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
- N415WF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2021)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the experimental, amateur-built airplane reported that the airplane contained about 13 gallons of fuel prior to takeoff for a 1-hour local flight. After flying for about 30 minutes, the pilot switched from the left to the right fuel tank. Shortly thereafter, the engine lost power. The pilot thought he accidently ran out of fuel; however, the header fuel tank gauge indicated a full tank. Due to the airplane’s low altitude at the time of the engine power loss, the pilot executed a forced landing to a mowed wheat field which was surrounded by a low-profile fence. During the landing, the airplane contacted the fence and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and rudder. The airplane’s fuel system consisted of a fuel tank in each wing that gravity fed to a header tank. The header tank contained two internal fuel pumps that delivered fuel to the engine driven fuel pump. The header tank was equipped with a “Motor Meter Racing Fuel Level” gauge. A postaccident examination and a functional test of the engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. A functional test of the fuel gauge determined the gauge was inoperative.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the fuel starvation was a faulty experimental fuel gauge.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA229
- Event ID
- 20220606105191
- Case number
- CEN22LA229
- 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: 921134c0bc7469b92d213b0f3b64b41142d12cec871c9b30d9a602b723336fe9; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:17:30.683Z.