NTSB CAROL · Event
Event CEN21LA383
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and the pilot's mismanagement of the available fuel.
Factual narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane’s fuel tanks were filled to the tabs during the preflight. He then departed on about a two-hour local flight, which included touch and go landings. He added that he did a soft field technique, where he pulled up abruptly. The engine then ran rough, so he leveled off, and the engine regained power briefly, before going to idle rpm. He lowered the flaps for the forced landing. During the forced landing, the left wing separated from the airplane after impact with a fence post. The pilot stated that he ran the fuel tank too low and when he pulled up during the takeoff, the remaining fuel was unable to reach the engine. He added that he “just ran the left tank too long without switching” fuel tanks. 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).
- — Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Fluid management
- — Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Identification/recognition-Pilot
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2021_CEN21LA383.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel starvation). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
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