The Cessna 182 departed from a private airport that did not have fuel available for purchase. The pilot elected to refuel while en route to his destination instead of other airports located near the departure airport.
The pilot further reported that upon reaching the airport that he intended to refuel at, he found it was closed and diverted to another airport. At that time, he noticed that the fuel gauge needles were “bouncing off empty.”
The airplane subsequently experienced a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field near Middletown Springs, Vermont, which resulted in substantial damage to the firewall and forward portion of the fuselage, as well as two minor injuries.
The pilot stated that he had he received a full weather briefing prior to the flight, he would have known about the closed airport and planned accordingly.
The NTSB determined the probable cause as the pilot’s inadequate preflight planning, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
NTSB Identification: ERA13CA427
This September 2013 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
The pilot and pilot rated passenger both sustained injuries (broken noses, cuts and lacerations that required stitches) from face plants into the panel/yoke during the crash landing. In addition the pilot broke his wrist. The aircraft was equipped with lap belts, but no shoulder harnesses. Fortunately for them, there was no fuel in the aircraft so (not mentioned in his report) there was no possibility of a post crash fire.
Of course, had they had adequate fuel then the accident would not have happened.
Prior to departure both pilot and pilot rated passenger dipped the tanks. They then used the larger estimated fuel (31 gallons vs 25 gallons) as the amount on board. At 12 gph, the average fuel burn for just about all of the C182 aircraft I’ve flown, that meant they gave up 1/2 hour of air time needlessly.
They could have fueled at any one of several airports enroute, but declined to do so because of ‘get-there-itis’.
The photograph of the crash site posted in the docket shows rolling hills covered with forest around the pasture where they crash landed (under control!). Kudos for flying the plane all the way to the crash, i.e. they didn’t stall or spin. Congrats that they had enough fuel to crash land in an open and somewhat level pasture rather than into the surrounding forested hills. Bummer that they were so focused on ‘the mission’ that they decided to operate off the bottom 1/3 of the fuel tank rather than investing 20 minutes in getting sufficient gas to assure their safe arrival.
Lotsa reasons to avoid undue optimism in estimating fuel aboard. When the dipped tanks vary in the estimated fuel aboard by 25% the message is clear: get gas!
You can’t fix stupid