FAA Flight Standards District Office: FAA Wichita FSDO-64
NTSB Identification: CEN16LA129
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Friday, March 18, 2016 in Wichita, KS
Probable Cause Approval Date: 08/16/2016
Aircraft: MOONEY M20C, registration: N9262M
Injuries: 2 Minor.
NTSB investigators may not have traveled in support of this investigation and used data provided by various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report.
The private pilot reported that he conducted a preflight inspection of the airplane and noted that both fuel tanks were full. The pilot then took off for the personal cross-country flight. During approach to landing at the destination airport, the pilot extended the downwind leg due to inbound instrument flight rules traffic. The engine then suddenly lost power, and the pilot conducted a forced landing.
An examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies. The fuel tank selector was positioned to the left fuel tank, and the electric fuel pump was in the “off” position. No fuel was found in the left tank. There was no smell of fuel, no evidence of fuel spillage, and the fuel tank did not appear to have been breached. Some fuel, about 2 to 3 inches deep, was found in the right fuel tank. If the pilot had switched the fuel selector from the left to the right fuel tank and turned on the electric fuel pump, the engine would not have been starved of fuel.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:
The total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from the pilot's improper fuel management.
On March 18, 2016, about 1525 central daylight time, a Mooney M20C, N9262M, lost engine power while on approach to the Col. James Jabara Airport (AAO), Wichita, Kansas, and subsequently collided with terrain. The pilot and his passenger received minor injuries. The airplane was substantially damaged. The airplane was registered to and operated by the Sabris Corporation, Wichita, Kansas, under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident, and no flight plan had been filed. The flight originated from Dickson (M02), Tennessee, about 1130 was en route to AAO.
According to the pilot's statement, he had preflighted the airplane in M02 and noted that both fuel tanks were "filled to the rim." (According to the Mooney Aircraft Corporation, fuel capacity for the model M20C is 52 gallons, 26 gallons per wing tank). The flight to AAO was uneventful. Due to inbound IFR (instrument flight rules) traffic, the pilot extended the downwind leg for landing when the engine suddenly lost power. The pilot said he used the ALARMS (airspeed, landing site, air restart, radios, mayday, secure plane) checklist. The airplane was too far from the runway, so the pilot attempted to land on a golf course. He did not recall the forced landing and woke up in an ambulance en route to the hospital.
A Federal Aviation Administration inspector who examined the airplane reported finding "no discernible quantity of fuel in the left tank." The fuel selector was positioned on the left fuel tank, and the electric fuel pump was in the off position. When the airplane was placed in a level position, the inspector was not able to sump fuel from the left fuel tank, even with the electric fuel pump running, or from the fuel selector valve sump. Some fuel was noted in the right fuel tank. The inspector was able to sump fuel from the right fuel tank. The fuel level was about 2 to 3 inches in depth. There was no evidence of fuel spillage, and the fuel tanks did not appear to have been breached. There were no fuel stains on the ground or the smell of fuel around the airplane. No other anomalies or mechanical failures were noted.
Airplane damage consisted of a buckled lower fuselage from the engine cowling aft to the rear bulkhead. The firewall was bent. The right wing leading edge bore crush damage, and the main landing gear was pushed up through the wing. The flap was also bent.
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Friday, March 18, 2016 in Wichita, KS
Aircraft: MOONEY M20C, registration: N9262M
Injuries: 2 Minor.
This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed. NTSB investigators may not have traveled in support of this investigation and used data provided by various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report.
On March 18, 2016, about 1115 central daylight time, a Mooney M20C, N9262M, lost engine power while on approach to the Col. James Jabara Airport (AAO), Wichita, Kansas. The pilot and his passenger received minor injuries. The airplane was substantially damaged. The airplane was registered to and operated by the Sabris Corporation, Wichita, Kansas, under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident, and no flight plan had been filed. The flight originated from Dickson (M02), Tennessee, about 1130 was destined for AAO.
The pilot said he was on an extended downwind leg for landing when the engine suddenly lost power. He did not recall the forced landing. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector who examined the airplane reported finding no fuel in the left fuel tank. The fuel selector was positioned on the left tank. Some fuel was noted in the right fuel tank. The auxiliary fuel pump switch was off. There was no evidence of fuel spillage on the ground.
Nicole Klusner and Christian Dell
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Christian Dell and Nicole Klusener.
WICHITA, Kansas – A small plane made an emergency landing on the Tallgrass Golf course this weekend.
The plane landed on its belly and the pilot and passenger made it out with barely a scratch.
Seventeen-year-old Christian Dell and his girlfriend, 18-year-old Nicole Klusener, both from Andover, are lucky to be alive, walking from this plane crash. Christian wanted to come back to the scene because he says he doesn’t remember anything.
“We crawled out from what they tell me. I can’t remember,” said Dell.
He only remembers clipping the tree and waking up in an ambulance.
“There’s that tree that we clipped, the shorter one,” Dell said. “We just barely came over the roof of those houses.”
Dell has a broken nose and cheek bone. His girlfriend, has minor scraps and a concussion. They were coming back from Nashville, planning on landing at Jabara Airport safely, but the engine gave out.
“You never think it’ll happen to you and it did. We were trying to restart it, but yea it didn’t restart.”
He had two options, go into panic mode or save himself and his girlfriend. His first reaction was landing the plane safely.
“Whenever we’re up with my instructor, we always talk about what happens if your engine fails here. Pick a spot and land there,” Dell said. “That’s kind of what happened. You pick a spot and make it there.”
Dell recently got his pilot’s license, but had been flying for the past two years and says he has a lot of hours experience. He’s just happy things didn’t turn for the worse.
“We’re really lucky we that we got away with the lack of injuries that we did. As far as plane crashes go, this is pretty good.”
The NTSB is still investigating. As for Dell, he says he will fly again, but he may wait for a couple of months before he goes up again.
http://wjhl.com
The Andover teens crashed a private plane onto Tallgrass Country Club after the aircraft's engine gave out Friday afternoon.
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"We were just coming back from a Spring break trip in Nashville," Dell said.
Dell and Klusener were getting close to their landing point at Jabara Airport when something went horribly wrong.
"We've got an engine failure," Dell called into the Wichita tower. "We're trying to make it to final."
The rental plane's engine gave out as the couple was making their decent.
"I was just like, looking at Christian hoping that he knew what to do and I was praying to God," Klusener said.
"At that point it's all kind of flashback to training," Dell said.
Dell says he flew the four-seat plane right over the top of some houses lining the 14th hole of the golf course; then they clipped a tree before crashing into the ground.
"We're being told this is a small private aircraft the landed on the golf course, there are several occupants, looks like they were getting out of the plane, but injured," a 911 dispatcher scratched over the radio.
Dell says if it hadn't been for a sand trap they would have landed fairly smoothly, but instead they crashed hard. Both smashed their heads against the dash leaving them concussed and the rest of the story very foggy.
"He got out and was walking around, had blood coming out of his eyes," Klusener said.
Now that both are out of the hospital and have had time to reflect, the couple realizes how close they came to losing it all while Dell did everything he could to prevent the emergency landing from harming others.
"It's fortunate that no one else got hurt," he said.
"He did his job and that's how we're alive right now," Klusener said.
Dell says his two years of flying experience helped him keep calm during a frightening ordeal. They are still waiting for the results of the ongoing FAA investigation as to what went wrong with the rental plane's engine.
Story and video: http://www.kake.com
Two high school seniors are recovering from various injuries after their rental plane experienced engine failure and crashed on the way home from a spring-break vacation.
Certified pilot Christian Dell, 17, and his girlfriend, Nicole Klusner, 18, had saved up their money to rent a small aircraft for a few days of fun in Nashville, Tennessee.
The nearly two-hour journey home was smooth sailing until the last leg of the flight. "It just started spluttering and it ultimately failed," Dell said.
Klusner said, "I didn't know what to do or what was going on. The first thing I thought about were my parents."
"I was just looking at him [Dell], trusting he knew what to do and praying to God that we were going to be OK," she added.
Indeed, Dell's emergency training kicked in as he missed homes and power lines, and dodged trees, eventually crash landing the plane on the 14th hole of a golf course.
Residents who saw the rough landing ran to the rescue, getting both teens out and off to the hospital where they were treated for concussions and head injuries.
Klusner praised her boyfriend for his skills: "He just did his job and that's how we're alive right now."
Wichita Police Department Lt. Paul Duff told reporters, "From what I was told, the pilot did an excellent job."
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating what went wrong.
Story and video: http://abcnews.go.com
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