More than two years after a Piper Cherokee training flight crashed in a Bridgewater Township farm field, federal investigators have determined that fuel starvation preceded the loss of engine power. The June 10, 2024, crash killed 46-year-old Kevin Kreger, a Dearborn chiropractor and flight instructor, and critically injured his 22-year-old student pilot.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s probable-cause finding in docket CEN24FA215 identified the fuel selector’s position as a contributing factor: it had been inadvertently left between the Left Tank and Off settings. That position blocked fuel flow. After the engine lost power, the crew attempted a forced landing, and the airplane went down in a field.
The NTSB identified the probable cause as the flight instructor’s failure to maintain control while maneuvering for the forced landing after the total loss of engine power. It identified the selector’s position as a contributing factor in the subsequent engine-power loss, but the finding does not by itself establish a national pattern or rate for fuel-starvation accidents.
A recurring general-aviation hazard
Fuel management is a documented hazard beyond this Michigan crash, although individual accidents are examples rather than evidence that such events are becoming more frequent. In Lakin, West Virginia, on April 23, 2025, the NTSB attributed a Beech 95-C55’s fuel starvation and total loss of engine power to inadequate preflight inspection and inflight fuel management; one person was seriously injured. The NTSB’s report describes that separate accident…