CEN24LA376 · Piper PA-32-300
Kab Air Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From East Gull Lake Airport (9Y2) to Flying Cloud Airport (FCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA376
- 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
Piper PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N2032M
- Operator
- Kab Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East Gull Lake Airport (9Y2), East Gull Lake, MNTo Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Minneapolis, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1978)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that once reaching cruising altitude, he switched the fuel selector to the right wing tip fuel tank. About 10 to 15 minutes later, the engine lost partial power. The pilot turned on the fuel pump, but he did not switch fuel tanks. The engine continued to lose power; the pilot declared an emergency and diverted to the nearest airport. Unable to reach the nearest airport, the pilot conducted a forced landing to a roadway. During the landing, the airplane veered left into the ditch to avoid oncoming motor vehicle traffic. The right wing struck a roadway sign, which resulted in substantial damage, and the airplane came to rest upright in the grass. The pilot stated that he did not switch fuel tanks during the initial loss of engine power, and that he ran the right wing tip fuel tank dry.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel management which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA376
- Event ID
- 20240930195231
- Case number
- CEN24LA376
- 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: 0b6e4764d62bf736f96157b7f3ff800710968c4c8153d948898050cddf2d3afd; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:20:14.657Z.