CEN24LA114 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Halliburton Field (DUC) to Hereford Municipal Airport (HRX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA114
- 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
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7586R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Halliburton Field (DUC), Duncan, OKTo Hereford Municipal Airport (HRX), Hereford, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1966)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- 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 student pilot was conducting a solo cross-country flight when the airplane had a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. The pilot reported that he switched fuel tanks but was unable to restore engine power before an off-airport forced landing was made in an open field. The airplane’s left wing sustained substantial damage when it struck a metal fence post during the forced landing.
According to the student pilot and fueling documentation, the airplane departed on the cross-country flight with a full fuel load (50 gallons) evenly distributed between the wing fuel tanks. The student pilot stated that he switched fuel tanks every 30 minutes during the estimated 2.4 hour flight. However, after the accident, the right fuel tank was found void of usable fuel, and the left fuel tank remained full. A postaccident operational engine test run did not reveal any mechanical anomalies with the engine. It is likely that the student pilot (who did not have a flight instructor endorsement for the solo cross-country flight) mismanaged the fuel during the flight which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper fuel management during the cross-country flight, 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 CEN24LA114
- Event ID
- 20240213193792
- Case number
- CEN24LA114
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-02-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3997926c7ab1cda242569f94010ca500d0b40e49554ebacc852dc781c68d0448; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:30:43.780Z.