NTSB CAROL · Event
Event WPR20CA199
Registry · N341MR
FAA Aircraft Registry record.
Make / Model
BEECH D-45
Year of manufacture
1955 · 65 years old at event
Seats / Engines
2 seats · 1 engine
ADS-B equipped
Yes — Mode-S A3C228
Registrant of record
RUSSELL MARC R TRUSTEE
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's improper fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and impact with terrain.
Factual narrative
The pilot stated that he planned to complete a cross-country flight and had estimated a total fuel consumption of 30 gallons. During his preflight inspection, the fuel gauges showed 13 gallons in the left fuel tank and 17 gallons in the right fuel tank. The pilot visually confirmed that each tank contained fuel and then added 10 gallons of fuel. As the pilot descended through 6,500 ft mean sea level about 10 nm south of the destination airport, the engine "sputtered" and then lost all power. According to the pilot, the fuel gauges showed no fuel in the left tank and 17 gallons of fuel in the right tank. After subsequent attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, he established a glide profile and made a forced landing in a field about 1 nm south of the airport. A postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the left wing. Both fuel tanks were void of fuel and the fuel gauges indicated no fuel in the left tank and 5 gallons in the right tank. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical anomalies or malfunctions that would have precluded normal flight. He further stated that his "best conclusion is that the engine lost power due to fuel starvation." The pilot stated that he planned to complete a cross-country flight and had estimated a total fuel consumption of 30 gallons. During his preflight inspection, the fuel gauges showed 13 gallons in the left fuel tank and 17 gallons in the right fuel tank. The pilot visually confirmed that each tank contained fuel and then added 10 gallons of fuel. As the pilot descended through 6,500 ft mean sea level about 10 nm south of the destination airport, the engine "sputtered" and then lost all power. According to the pilot, the fuel gauges showed no fuel in the left tank and 17 gallons of fuel in the right tank. After subsequent attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, he established a glide profile and made a forced landing in a field about 1 nm south of the airport. A postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the left wing. Both fuel tanks were void of fuel and the fuel gauges indicated no fuel in the left tank and 5 gallons in the right tank. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical anomalies or malfunctions that would have precluded normal flight. He further stated that his "best conclusion is that the engine lost power due to fuel starvation." 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-Fluid level - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2020_WPR20CA199.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, 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.
- 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),…
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Contact Angle Hysteresis on Rough Surfaces Part II: Energy Dissipation via Microscale Interface Dynamics
The wetting behaviour of surfaces is important for various applications like super-hydrophobic surfaces, enhanced oil recovery, mining of metal ores and anti-icing surfaces etc.
- arXiv 2022 · arXiv preprint
Proactive Distributed Emergency Response with Heterogeneous Tasks Allocation
Traditionally, traffic incident management (TIM) programs coordinate the deployment of emergency resources to immediate incident requests without accommodating the interdependencies on incident evolut…
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Abstract
U.S. Civil Rotorcraft Accidents, 1963 through 1997
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recorded 8,436 rotorcraft accidents during the period mid - 1963 through the end of 1997.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Contractor Report (CR)
Pilot Non-Conformance to Alerting System Commands
This research project examined the effects of consonance between cockpit displays and alerting system as a technique to encourage pilots to conform to alerting system commands.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Technical Memorandum (TM)
Crew Factors in Flight Operations: A Survey of Fatigue Factors in Corporate/Executive A Viation Operations - 8
Corporate flight crews face unique challenges including unscheduled flights, quickly changing schedules, extended duty days, long waits, time zone changes, and peripheral tasks.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗