The pilot departed on the 40-mile flight with an unknown quantity of fuel onboard the Mooney M20, but he estimated that it had about 10 gallons more than he thought was needed for the flight.
While maneuvering to land at the airport in Georgetown, Del., he increased the engine power twice, but it did not respond.
He anticipated that the plane could land on the airport property, however, it struck wires and terrain short of the runway, resulting in a serious injury.
Seven gallons of fuel were recovered from the 78.6-gallon fuel system, of which three gallons were unusable.
The amount of fuel recovered from each tank could not be determined, and which tank the pilot had selected at the time of the loss of engine power could also not be determined.
However, after the accident, the pilot reported that data from the airplane’s engine monitor revealed that the fuel flow stopped 60 seconds before the propeller stopped.
He added that he probably should have purchased fuel before his departure and that, if he had it to do over, he would.
After replacing the damaged propeller with a slave propeller and adding five gallons of fuel in each wing tank, an engine test run was conducted. The engine started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously without interruption throughout the test.
The NTSB determined the probable cause as the pilot’s improper preflight planning and in-flight fuel management, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power. Also causal to the accident was the pilot’s failure to see and avoid the wires on the airport boundary.
NTSB Identification: ERA14LA242
This May 2014 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.
Careful with the criticism, your day may come.
Indeed Gary. And it can, whether we criticize, or abstain from. Done that, and I have to watch out for it. It’s not pretty.
I’m just a student pilot, but I’ve learned something reading a lot of accident reports.
A pilot is fallible. No matter how good he/she is at the controls or how many hours they have flown. We all have a fallible brain, which can, and will fail us one day. We are all born with this. We all make “stupid” decisions from time to time. Eventually it will happen to us. One day we will make a decision we will regret. Perhaps due to being too complacent, perhaps due to being too comfortable, whatever it is. Look out.
Criticism will take you to the road of pride, which leads straight to complacence town!
Pride is before the fall, as the Bible says.
You don’t want complacence…
Or to fly with it. Fly safe, as they say.
The idea that it eventually will happen to us is nonsense. I will never, EVER take off with an “unknown quantity of fuel”. Period.
Well said. A basic preflight includes the question to “yourself” Do I have the fuel for the mission? To just plow off into the sky without this consideration is very poor judgment and should be consideration for a personal evaluation of your flight management skills.
Good grief. Y’all missed the point.
It doesn’t have to be something as simple as forgetting to add fuel! Yes, I agree, we need to do a pre-flight check, it is a MUST do! I’m talking about distractions here. Things you forget to do, and THAT could happen to any of us. Listen, that’s the point I’m trying to come across.
Distractions can happen while you are flying, or while you are on the ground. That’s why you need a pre-flight check. And if you are flying, and you get distracted, remove the distraction – or minimize it! Then fly the darn plane, so that you don’t make BASIC mistakes if you get distracted! It has happened to even Air Force pilots who forgot to retract the landing gear. Distractions can kill us.
It can happen to you and me. Keep it simple man. Fly the plane. Don’t get distracted. Don’t be negligent. 😉
I had a partial engine failure Feb15th 2015. After declaring an emergency and getting setup for the runway 7 miles away ATC asked how many soles, and fuel was on board. I assumed the guy was asking how much emergency equipment would be needed if I wasn’t going to make the field. The engine destroyed itself internally, but kept making some power the whole way down. The next morning I realized ATC’s real question was “why the hell didn’t you buy another 5 gallons of fuel”…
I landed with 4 hours of fuel left. I never have understood not having at least 90 minutes of fuel left after the flight..
As I say all the time about incidents like this. You can’t fix stupid.
The three most useless things to a pilot: the air above, the runway behind and the fuel in the truck. He should have played it safe and filled up first, maybe it was a more expensive location for that purchase but how much will the repairs cost ???