ERA24LA240 · Aero Commander CALLAIR A-9B
Aero Commander CALLAIR A-9B · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA240
- 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
Aero Commander CALLAIR A-9B
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander CALLAIR A-9B
- 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
- N7650V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 on the glider tow flight with the airplane’s left fuel tank completely full, and between “1/4 and 1/2 a tank” in the right fuel tank, which was selected for the flight. The pilot successfully released the glider at 3,000 ft msl and entered a left, spiraling descent. At 2,800 feet, “the engine shut down (due to fuel). This has happened previously when the bank angle is steep enough and the tank low enough that the fuel does not reach the fuel pickup.” The pilot leveled the wings, but engine power did not resume. The airplane lacked the glide performance to return to the departure runway, or the pilot’s selected forced landing site. The pilot did not remember the accident landing which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane’s fuselage and both wings. The airplane’s fuel system was compromised and its postaccident fuel state could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power while maneuvering due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA240
- Event ID
- 20240603194367
- Case number
- ERA24LA240
- 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: e7ce567097a6e71154bb7bf54af1c7c2bde3f9ec20383b9c080ae5e8e5d864d2; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:49:54.877Z.