CEN25LA035 · de Havilland DHC-1
de Havilland DHC-1 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA035
- 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
de Havilland DHC-1
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-1
- 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
- N420TD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1951)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the left wing fuel tank contained 3 gallons and the right wing fuel tank contained 4 gallons of fuel before departing on the accident flight. The pilot said he determined the fuel quantities during the prefight from fuel quantity gauge indications and by looking into each fuel tank to see if it was wetted with fuel. The pilot departed, performed one touch-and-go landing, then flew about 3 miles west, where he performed two steep turns before returning to the airport. The pilot reported that, while on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the left wing fuel quantity gauge indicated 2 gallons, the right wing fuel quantity gauge indicated 3 gallons. While on final approach for landing, about 250-300 ft above ground level (agl) the engine lost total power. The pilot switched fuel tanks, but the engine did not regain power. The pilot performed a forced landing about 300 to 400 ft short of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. Postaccident examination revealed that the left wing fuel tank was empty and the right tank contained about 1 ½ gal of fuel. No fuel was present at the carburetor jets or the fuel supply line to the carburetor. The lack of fuel in these locations is consistent with a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. It is likely that the engine could not be restarted immediately due to air within the fuel system. Testing of the left wing fuel tank quantity gauge found the gauge was inaccurate, likely due to the presence of corrosion within the gauge assembly. Examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded engine operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel management, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the inaccurate fuel gauge.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA035
- Event ID
- 20241107195455
- Case number
- CEN25LA035
- 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: d32f11885a0905e1192405c69079ae99adc68e0e90f3915316f72684af086b61; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:27:17.581Z.