CEN24FA240 · Cessna 414A
Cessna 414A · Accident: fuel starvation during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24FA240
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
Cessna 414A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 414
- 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
- N414BS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing on a local flight to check newly installed avionics on the airplane. During takeoff, the airplane lifted off within the performance specifications cited in the airplane flight manual. Shortly after liftoff, the pilot reported to air traffic control (ATC) that he had lost left engine power. The pilot continued the takeoff with the landing gear still extended. A witness stated that the airplane seemed to lose left engine power during the takeoff before reaching taxiway B4, and “yawed left quite a bit.” The remaining runway distance from the B4 taxiway to the departure end of the runway was about 2,600 to 2,700 ft. The witness stated that the airplane was not far past the departure end of runway when it began to turn left. As the pilot continued the takeoff and attempted the climb out, ATC instructed the pilot to turn right. The pilot responded that he was going to turn left, which was a turn into the inoperative engine and in the improper direction due to the greater left rolling tendency and increased likelihood of a loss of control. As the flight progressed, the airplane ground speed slowed to the airplane’s air minimum control speed (Vmc) when it rolled left and impacted terrain in an inverted attitude. The airplane was destroyed. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The examination revealed the left engine fuel tank valve was in the Off position, which starved the left engine of fuel, creating a total loss of left engine power. The left engine propeller was not feathered, and the landing gear was extended. Although the pilot completed ground and flight training and a proficiency check in the make and model airplane about 4 months before the accident, he failed to ensure proper fuel tank selection, with the fuel selector in the OFF position for the left engine and failed to land on the remaining runway after the loss of left engine power. Following the decision to continue the takeoff, the pilot also failed to follow engine inoperative emergency procedures that would have increased airspeed/climb rate to enable continued flight. The pilot’s actions resulted in a loss of control that led to a Vmc roll and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt continued flight after a loss of left engine power with usable runway remaining and his subsequent failure to follow the emergency procedures and maintain air minimum control speed, which resulted in a loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper fuel tank selection that resulted in a loss of left engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24FA240
- Event ID
- 20240627194560
- Case number
- CEN24FA240
- 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: 3d152fbb3d05ba71359fb6505c8cfe67aaad096957d7bd302cf1e27a84d74352; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:19:35.181Z.