Following a 1.5-hour local flight, the pilot was returning to his home airfield.
Due to inbound traffic to the airport, he circled once to the west and descended for the runway. About eight miles from the runway, he lowered the landing gear and set 10° flaps.
While on the base leg, the engine did not respond to the throttle inputs. He switched fuel tanks, turned on the auxiliary fuel pump, and increased the mixture.
Engine power was not restored, and he notified the tower that the Cessna T210N had a total loss of engine power.
Traffic was too heavy on a nearby road, so he performed a forced landing to a vacant field near Eagle, Colorado.
The airplane touched down, and the pilot applied brakes. The airplane traveled for about 90′, hit a ditch, and nosed over.
The pilot thought that he had about 45 gallons of fuel before takeoff, but he told the FAA inspector that he had miscalculated his fuel. Only residue fuel was found during recovery of the airplane. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause: The pilot’s inadequate preflight fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
NTSB Identification: CEN18CA021
This October 2017 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.
I think this applies to the old adage, “the only time there is ever TOO much fuel in the aircraft, is when it’s on FIRE”
Flaps on downwind, flaps on base, flaps, flaps, flaps. If the guy hadn’t enough gas that it was that critical when he dropped flaps, then HE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH GAS to be aloft in the first place!
It is just amazing how many so called best pilots in the world never make mistakes as us lowly GA pilots due every time we fly. Hey the guy made a screw up unlike some of you never do. Oh I’m also a Pilot, maybe not as good as you guys but I do have some skills.
I’m a A&P who worked on light aircraft and heavy aircraft, a SR. VP Line Maintenance Mgr. for a airline with a fleet of over 900 aircraft. I have seen it all, so don’t spout how great you guys are when you fly nothing bigger that a Cessna. I have sat on NTSB boards for my airline and you don’t have a clue what happens during and after these accident / incidents.
So for the love of anything give the guys a break who make so called bonehead moves. You know what, it happens to us all, from 100 hr Pilots to 15,000 hr pilots.
All you experts need to take a back seat and breath a little before you start pointing fingers.
Oh, running out of fuel is not good, but it still happens to all type of aircraft and pilots, from 4 seaters to 200 seats. Some you would just not believe could or would ever happen.
Thanks, fly safe.
Yeah, I’ve made a few bonehead mistakes also, but running out of fuel is inexcusable. Unless they were uninsured, it raises the rates for the rest of us thank you very much!
If you intentionally violate the FARs, you usually lose your certificate. If you run out of gas, you should return your certificate to the FAA because you are too stupid to fly! I’ve vowed that if I do that I will stop flying and turn in my certificate. Care to make the same pledge?
Well before I became a pilot I lived near Meadowlark Field in Huntington Beach, Ca. a 210 pilot with 3 friends on board from Monterey en route to John Wayne passed numerous airports where he could have stopped for gas.
He clipped the tops of the Eucalyptus trees after deciding not to land on the golf course.
He paid for his mistakes with his life. His right seater was busted up pretty bad but lived.
The two guys in the back walked away.
If the fine fellows at the FAA initiated a new regulation mandating fuel totalizers would it make a difference to the number of fuel exhaustion crashes ? It’s almost 2020 . ( bird brain might forget to hit the full button after refueling … I have )
Wrong, we have small GA aircraft. Get the ladder, dip the tank, look in the hole. Every time before you turn the key. Do it religiously. You won’t run out of fuel. When was the last time you ran out of gas in your car?
I thank GA News for publishing these crash reports and allowing comments , so that we may review and discuss them, and try to identify what the pilot could have done to avoid the situation leading to the crash.
I’m a pilot, aircraft owner and an FAA Safety Rep., so I run seminars on aviation safety topics, which include all of the situations that GA News runs is these daily emails.
My thoughts on these crashes are to point out what possibly went wrong and what the pilot could have done to be more aware and correct the situation before it results in a crash. .
In this case, a look at the fuel gauges would have shown very low fuel, with the needles bouncing on ’empty’. [ which the FAA requires to be accurate on ‘E’ ].
As pilots, we won’t live long enough to make all these mistakes, and live to learn from them.
That’s why these articles are so important to us.
I agree wholeheartedly with what everyone before me has said. I am running out of words to describe these bone headed mistakes. Quite frankly, I don’t understand how you can have such a cavalier attitude when lives are at stake. Insurance surcharge and forfeiture of ticket are penalties that I would support in addition to mandatory classroom retraining. YOU have complete control over how long your aircraft will resist gravity. There are no excuses. Run out of fuel on final!! What was it a one degree glideslope with a full load of bricks. I give up.
There are ‘stupid pilot tricks’, but this guy is oblivious to all the risks that he is taking.!
Reading the NTSB form 6120;
He arrives to find the battery dead. So, he takes to the fbo and charges it for 2 hrs.
Then on takeoff, aborts since the engine is not making ‘full power’. [ and a 2 hr charge does not ensure that the alternator won’t trip off-line when the gear is retracted ]
So, he has an A&P check it and does something to get full power.
Then he does 2 touch-and-goes to check the engine himself.
Eventually they go fly for 25 min, doing 2 more touch and goes, and returns, but can’t make the runway from the base leg when the engine quits. [ bomber pattern ?]
So, most us would think that 45 gallons is a lot of fuel, but the T210 will burn 30 GPH during a full throttle climb, and burn 17 gph in cruise….then, suddenly, 45 gal [ 1/2 tanks], is not enough to do all the ‘stuff’ he did, and ended in his destroying the aircraft…. luckily, both got out uninjured.
Gallons in the aircraft don’t mean much to some. As had been said before, ‘it’s time in the tank’. Not impossibly difficult to understand. This basic stuff needs to the STRESSED during flight training and BFR’s
I still say, ” the insurance company’s should have the names of all those people that run out of fuel on top of their list” so when the time comes to renew their insurance on their aircraft, the insurance co. would tack on an extra $ 1000.00 to renew !!! Maybe and only Maybe that would curtail some of these jerks to take a longer look inside their fuel tanks before attempting a typical flight. Absolutely no excuse for this type of person that does this…..
JoeHG,
From all of the crash reports I’ve seen, very few of the ‘off airport landings’ result in an airworthy aircraft, and usually they are totaled by the insurance co.
So, there are few re-insured, crashed aircraft.
BTW, the NTSB form 6120 is a public doc., and has all the details of the crash. I’m sure that the ins.co. looks at it.
I know of ‘older’ pilot friends that have crashed an aircraft and cannot get insurance, so they either stop flying, or fly without insurance…
He was on base leg and couldn’t make the airport?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Keep flying those airliner approaches and flying away from perfectly good runways.
When you put 10 degrees of flaps in 8 miles from the airport, things like this can happen. I was trained how to fly the full pattern and land if the engine quit midfield on the downwind. No flaps until you have the runway made, no matter where you are in the pattern.
FAA recommends .5 to 1 nm from the runway edge in the pattern for SEL. In my humble opinion, you should always go with .5 unless there’s a darn good reason not to, like an obstacle NOTAM.
Flew with a diff CFI once to get checked out in a Warrior. He criticized me for flying the pattern that close. Why on earth to these CFIs teach their pilots to fly 2nm patterns for PPL training?
This sort of aeronautical ineptitude is totally inexcusable. A pilot who can’t keep track of the fuel he has aboard should stay in the line shack.
Per the article he was required by the tower to, I assume, make a 360 degree turn to space for existing traffic in the pattern. If that traffic hadn’t been there we wouldn’t be reading about this accident. No excuse for “thinking” he had 45 gallons, however.
I really dislike the term “fuel exhaustion” because it minimizes the seriousness of the situation in an aircraft. The real term should be something like “boneheaded pilot fails to check for and ensure adequate fuel for the flight thus ensuring safety for anyone in the plane and on the ground” or something similar.
Thanks for helping our insurance rates go up. Now turn in your pilot certificate to the FAA.