ANC25LA116 · SOCATA TBM 700
SOCATA TBM 700 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Glacier Park International Airport (KGPI) to Alpine Airpark (46U)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA116
- 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
SOCATA TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N101NX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glacier Park International Airport (KGPI), Kalispell, MTTo Alpine Airpark (46U), Alpine, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 2004)
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was unable to determine actual amount of fuel on board the airplane. For his fuel planning he used indicated fuel amounts from the airplane’s analog fuel gauges as the input data for an electronic fuel planner and relied on the electronic fuel planner to track how much fuel was onboard the airplane. As they approached their destination, the airplane’s CAS (crew alerting system) began to display warnings for low fuel, and the pilot prepared for an emergency off-field landing. Subsequently, the engine experienced a total loss of power due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot then conducted a forced landing to an open field, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection and fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and a subsequent off airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA116
- Event ID
- 20250930201756
- Case number
- ANC25LA116
- 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 2025-09-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8d1e29c2f5b64d99402ec80823774a24085d37ead181a97b63458d719bc99978; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:24:26.326Z.