NYC95LA174 · SOCATA TB-10
Fly Boys SOCATA TB-10 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From N80 · Ocean City, MD to Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA174
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
SOCATA TB-10
- Aircraft type
- Socata TB-10
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N20BX
- Operator
- Fly Boys
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N80 · Ocean City, MDTo Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), Frederick, MD
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 2500 feet msl, the pilot advised air traffic control, that he had a loss of engine power. He indicated that he was 'running out of fuel.' During the forced landing, the aircraft struck trees short of a field where the pilot was attempting to land. The examination of the wreckage revealed the fuel tanks were empty. The last known refueling of the airplane was on July 20, 1995. At that time 31.9 gallons of fuel were added to the tanks. Between the last refueling and the accident, the airplane flew 5 hours and 36 minutes. This model airplane has a total fuel capacity of 51 gallons, and a range of 5 hours 5 minutes at a 72% power setting. At the same power setting at 2000 feet the fuel consumption rate is 10.6 gallons per hour.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate inflight planning and fuel mismanagement, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA174
- Event ID
- 20001207X04074
- Case number
- NYC95LA174
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c14ce472ef3981c438361e1d5c8b8b00b23642c26e6cfda89f6045bab22b4ed9; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:08:29.897Z.