ERA26LA050 · Cessna 401 A
Cessna 401 A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Pitt-Greenville Airport (PGV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA050
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Cessna 401 A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 401
- 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
- N6255Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pitt-Greenville Airport (PGV), Greenville, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On November 18, 2025, at 12:30 eastern standard time, a Cessna 401A, N6255Q, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Eureka, North Carolina. The commercial pilot received minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 aerial observation flight. The pilot reported that, prior to the flight, he had the airplane serviced with 124 gallons of fuel, topping off the fuel tanks. The pilot stated that the preflight inspection, takeoff, and climb to 17,000 ft were uneventful. During the flight, the pilot transferred the fuel in the locker tanks into the main fuel tanks; shortly after emptying the locker tanks, he switched to the auxiliary fuel tanks. The pilot stated that he utilized the auxiliary fuel tanks until they were at the 5-gallon mark on the fuel gauges. The pilot then switched to the main fuel tanks; shortly thereafter, he reported the left engine lost power. As he started performing the emergency checklist, the right engine lost power. After the losses of engine power, the pilot stated that he trimmed the airplane for 120 knots. The pilot determined he would be unable to reach his selected airport and decided to perform a forced landing in a field. The pilot lowered the landing gear and set the flaps to 10°. After landing on the field, the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane came to a stop. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the fuselage. According to the recovery personnel, about 2 gallons of fuel were drained from each auxiliary tank, and about 25 gallons were drained from each main fuel tank. The wreckage was recovered and retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA050
- Event ID
- 20251125202051
- Case number
- ERA26LA050
- 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. 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: 194b45081ae4893e398e63ddeee19009fb66dfb9d85f3632ce03563557196195; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:33:53.350Z.