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Atlas / NTSB / WPR21LA146

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR21LA146

2021-03-28 Watsonville, California, United States Airport · WVI None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s inadequate fuel management which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.

Factual narrative

The pilot reported that during takeoff, the engine lost power. During the forced landing, the airplane struck power lines, nosed over, and impacted terrain. The fuselage and the right wing sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation and that the reason for the loss of engine power was 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).

  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Use of equip/system-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Fluid management

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2021_WPR21LA146.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

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.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗