CEN26LA165 · Pipistrel Alpha Trainer
Pipistrel Alpha Trainer · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Limon Municipal Airport (LIC) to Meadow Lake Airport (FLY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA165
- 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
Pipistrel Alpha Trainer
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel ALPHA TRAINER
- 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
- N495LP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Limon Municipal Airport (LIC), Limon, COTo Meadow Lake Airport (FLY), Colorado Springs, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2023)
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The two commercial rated pilots were conducting a night cross-country flight with the purpose of building flight time. The pilots assessed fuel while on the return leg of their planned route and decided that there was enough fuel to conduct a practice instrument approach at another airport. After completing the practice approach, about 4 gallons of fuel was indicated on the fuel gauge and the pilots flew toward their destination. Subsequently, about 8 nautical miles from the destination, the engine lost all power. The right seat pilot conducted a forced landing to a field during which the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. Post-accident inspection of the fuel system showed no fuel visible in the tank and about 1/2 teaspoon of fuel was drained from the sump. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. According to the right seat pilot, there was a squawk on the airplane stating that the fuel gauge indicated about 2.5 to 3 gallons high. She stated that the squawk was not seen before the accident flight. According to the flight school, upon dispatching, pilots are automatically presented with open squawks to review through the company dispatching software.
Probable cause
The pilots’ inadequate preflight fuel planning and improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and subsequent forced landing to a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA165
- Event ID
- 20260414202824
- Case number
- CEN26LA165
- 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: e1b2ea643519846875d89ee4d16dd81729ec25701e3a40319a4da7612e7bcab2; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:14:44.237Z.