CEN23LA185 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (KFWS) to Odessa Schlemeyer Field (KODO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA185
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N433CF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (KFWS), Fort Worth, TXTo Odessa Schlemeyer Field (KODO), Odessa, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2003)
- 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 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that when he was about 6 miles from the destination airport, the engine began running very rough. The pilot turned 180° toward an alternate airport that he had just flown over and declared an emergency. He attempted to troubleshoot the engine roughness, but was unsuccessful, and the engine lost total power. Unable to reach the runway, the pilot conducted a forced landing to a rough field. During the forced landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the horizontal stabilizer. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the right fuel tank contained no usable fuel, and the left fuel tank contained about 25 gallons of fuel. The fuel selector was found in the right fuel tank position. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. After the accident, the pilot stated that he had no memory of changing tanks during the flight.
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 CEN23LA185
- Event ID
- 20230515174535
- Case number
- CEN23LA185
- 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, coordinates, 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: 2ff6764f585e12fe76f7406eea6d0d34af1e3ceddc6b099b5a558db5bae15eaf; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:36:31.141Z.