This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
I was going for a personal flight in my experimental aircraft with nothing specific in mind.
The specific mistake happened during my preflight. I missed the fact that the fuel shutoff valve was closed. I believe this happened because I got complacent.
I typically just always leave the fuel shutoff valve open. However, I hadn’t flown the plane in awhile and forgot to check the fuel shutoff valve pre-flight.
Everything went normal until about 5 minutes after departure cruising at or just below about 1,500 feet MSL. The engine began to stutter, I tried flipping on the boost pump, and immediately started planning where I would put it down if I lost engine power.
As I was doing this the engine died.
I had two spots in mind that I could safely land.
I tried restarting the engine and troubleshooting on the way down to no avail. My main focus was getting to the ground safely.
I could not make it to an airport. I picked a spot and safely landed the aircraft, away from people and in a spot the plane did not get damaged.
After I landed and was safe I did more troubleshooting and realized the fuel shutoff valve was closed and my engine died because it was not getting fuel despite having plenty.
After I opened the fuel shutoff valve the plane started and ran normally.
I can avoid this in the future by not being complacent and assuming the fuel shutoff valve would be in the open position the way I normally leave it or by creating and using a preflight checklist that includes checking the fuel shutoff valve.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 2032191
I had a C-150 for 12 years and the fuel shut off valve handle’s long part does not point to the “off” but a tiny tick on the short side does. Sold the 150 and bought an RV. Soon after I tried to start the RV and it wouldn’t start…..even though I used a checklist….It turned out that on the RV the handle’s long part points to the “left/right/off” and I had the long part in the off position….silly me…. I painted the long part of the handle bright green as a reminder not to do that again.
Pre-flight check: novel approach.
/J
Lucky to get that far. I had shut off the fuel valve after having fuel vent overboard while the plane was sitting on the ground at an airshow on a hot day. My only embarrassment was wondering why the plane wouldn’t start later. It is such an unusual thing to do (fuel valve in “off position” that it merits a paper sign on the stick when performed. Glad it ended well.