The private pilot reported that he checked the Cessna 172’s fuel tanks prior to takeoff.
He added it was dark in the hangar where he used a wire to check the fuel level in the fuel tanks. He was not wearing his glasses and he thought he had “an inch or so” of fuel.
He thought that was enough fuel and departed on a cross-country flight.
During the flight, the engine “sputtered” and lost power. He turned the airplane towards the destination airport, but lost airspeed, so he lowered the nose and conducted a forced landing into trees near Colchester, Illinois.
A post-accident examination revealed that the airplane sustained substantial empennage, fuselage, and wing damage, while the pilot sustained serious injuries.
The fuel tanks were empty and there was no fuel odor anywhere at the accident scene.
Probable Cause: The pilot’s inadequate preflight of the fuel quantity which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation during cruise flight.
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This May 2020 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.
And we all pay higher insurance premiums because of this fool.
An inch……that sounds sketchy to start with…..as for a wire…..well I’d be surprised if you could even see the fuel level. I’ve personally had to use a wooden stick before, but I could clearly see the fuel level and it was marked in fractional fuel level values so it was a lot more accurate than an inch of fuel.
Not fuel “starvation ” but fuel exhaustion
Sticks and wires? Come on folks…
how about using a tool designed for the job; like a clear Fuel Hawk calibrated fuel level ‘dip’ tube?
While the fuel check was not a fuel check, have to give the pilot credit for keeping the nose down and flying it into the crash, which is why he survived his dumb mistake.
The report says it had the Lycoming 320, so maybe mogas wasn’t a good idea—but “no gas” wasn’t a good idea either. An “inch” of fuel in any 172’s tanks isn’t much, obviously. I often fly my own 172 with less than full tanks, but never less than 12 in each tank for a total of 24—with a calibrated stick, not a wire—and that’s only for local pattern work. “I think I can” only works for the Little Engine That Could. As pilots, we have to “know I can”.
@JimH –
Hard to argue with anything you posted. How does a guy this dumb get a pilot’s license? How can one not *know* exactly how much fuel is available for flight, since life depends on it? At the very least, consider the fact of getting hurt; getting hurt, hurts.
If you’re going to “stick” tanks, use a wooden paint stir stick so you can see, not a piece of wire! Also, an “inch of fuel” is a nebulous fuel quantity assessment, also depending on nose strut extension. Who leaves on a cross country flight with “an inch of fuel”?
Does seem troublesome. Check fuel on a wire? A couple of blitz cans of mogas would have prevented the fuel starvation and if the 172 had the Cont O-300 the engine would have loved it. Continuing events like this make all us pilots look bad.
Really..!! ‘ 1 inch of fuel’.!! That amounts to about 6.5 gallons total , [ with the standard 39 gallon tanks].
Then there is the 2 gallons not usable, so he had about 4.5 gallons.
With the O-300 burning 7 gph, that’s about 36 minutes of fuel…
So. he would not be legal after 6 minutes, not having 30 minutes reserve fuel.
This guy took off from a private grass strip, and I’ll assume he was flying to a municipal airport for fuel, 21 nm away…. my guess.?
It would have been much smarter to drive to MQB for 10 gallons of 100LL, and bring it back.
So, more ‘Stupid Pilot Tricks’….seriously injured himself and wrecked the aircraft. !
I wonder what the other 2 co-owners think.?