NTSB CAROL · Event
Event CEN20CA146
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection of the fuel level, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Factual narrative
The pilot reported that during his preflight inspection, he perceived the fuel tank was about half full of fuel. After the airplane departed the airport and reached about 1,300 ft above ground level, the engine lost all power. The pilot turned back to the airport and selected a field for a forced landing, but realized the airplane was not able to glide to that field and so he selected a closer field. The airplane landed hard and nosed over, which damaged the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed the fuel tank contained about 1 gallon of fuel. Following the accident, the pilot stated he misread the fuel gauge. The pilot reported that, during his preflight inspection, he determined that the fuel tank was about 1/2 full (12 gallons). After the airplane departed the airport and reached about 1,300 ft above ground level, the engine lost all power. The pilot turned back to the airport and chose a field for a forced landing. The airplane landed hard, the landing gear collapsed, and the airplane then flipped over and came to rest upside down, which resulted in substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel tank contained about 1 gallon of fuel. Following the accident, the pilot stated that he realized he had misread the fuel gauge and that there were only about 3 gallons of fuel onboard at takeoff. Based on this information, it is likely the loss of engine power was due to fuel exhaustion. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- C Personnel issues-Task performance-Planning/preparation-Fuel planning-Pilot - C
- C Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Inadequate inspection - C
- C Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Fluid level - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2020_CEN20CA146.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel exhaustion). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Technical Memorandum (TM)
The Integration of eVTOL Aircraft and Infrastructure into San Jose Mineta International Airport
With the average American spending around 43 hours a year sitting in traffic1, and automobile emissions in the US accounting for 57% of all transportation emissions2, traditional transportation infras…
- arXiv 2024 · arXiv preprint
Newton-Raphson Flow for Aggressive Quadrotor Tracking Control
We apply the Newton-Raphson flow tracking controller to aggressive quadrotor flight and demonstrate that it achieves good tracking performance over a suite of benchmark trajectories, beating the nativ…
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2023 · Faculty research project
Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE)
Ship airwakes are the unsteady turbulent flows that are generated by the earths atmospheric boundary layer (the wind colloquially) blowing over a ship.
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Pegasus Simulator: An Isaac Sim Framework for Multiple Aerial Vehicles Simulation
Developing and testing novel control and motion planning algorithms for aerial vehicles can be a challenging task, with the robotics community relying more than ever on 3D simulation technologies to e…
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Segregated FLS Processing Cores for V/STOL Autonomous Landing Guidance Assistant System using FPGA
It is highly predicted that the roads and parking areas will be extremely congested with vehicles to the point that searching for a novel solution will not be an optional choice for conserving the sus…
- AOPA Air Safety Institute 2023 · Safety advisor
Safety Advisor: Fuel Awareness
AOPA Air Safety Institute safety advisor on preventing fuel-exhaustion and fuel-starvation accidents in general aviation. Covers pre-flight fuel planning, reserve requirements (14 CFR 91.151, 91.167),…
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗