CEN26LA144 · Mooney M20 C
Mooney M20 C · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Aero Valley Airport (52F) to Springtown, TX (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA144
- 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
Mooney M20 C
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N1374W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aero Valley Airport (52F), Northlake, TXTo Springtown, TX (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 63 years (built 1963)
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- 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 airplane departed from the airport for the short local area flight. Shortly after the pilot configured the airplane for cruise flight, the engine sustained a total loss of power. The pilot activated the electric boost pump, and he reached down to touch the fuel selector, located on the left side cockpit floor. He thought that the fuel selector was set to the right-wing fuel tank. Unable to restart the engine, the pilot elected to land at the departure airport. Due to the pilot prematurely extending the main landing gear, he performed a forced landing to a grass field located to the north of the departure airport. The right wing impacted trees, and the airplane came to rest upright on the grass field. Postaccident examination found the left-wing fuel tank was empty, the right-wing fuel tank had minimal fuel, and the fuel selector was found set to the left-wing fuel tank. There were no signs of fuel leakage at the accident site. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and to both wings. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane flight manual preflight checks state “check fuel” and the airplane flight manual starting checks state “fuel valve on (right or left main).” The pilot admitted that he made an error, and he felt that, like most other general aviation accidents, it should never have happened.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel management which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA144
- Event ID
- 20260324202687
- Case number
- CEN26LA144
- 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, coordinates, 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: 3d4eb3c2cee60fa80995fb48e00ac066c8b97f63479c9c518fbb73ddeddb39be; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:02:18.683Z.