IAD97LA097 · Grumman American AA-1B
Grumman American AA-1B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA097
- 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
Grumman American AA-1B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-1
- 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
- N9883L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF), Manassas, VA
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that during cruise flight at 2,500 MSL, 15 miles from his destination, the engine lost power. Subsequently, the airplane was damaged during the forced landing performed to a field. He said he topped off the tanks, and he switched fuel tanks every 1/2 hour. He said he should have had adequate fuel, as the usable fuel was 22 gallons at a rate of 6 gallons per hour. Examination of the airplane wreckage by the FAA revealed, the fuel tanks were intact, the airplane was at a right wing low attitude, and there was no fuel visible at the filler cap, the lowest point. . The left tank capillary fuel gage in the cockpit indicated a small amount of fuel. According to the hobbsmeter, the aircraft was operated three hours during this flight. According to the owner, the pilot had refueled the airplane on an incline. Examination of the airplane did not reveal any anomalies with the airplane or the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning which fail to provide an adequate fuel supply
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA097
- Event ID
- 20001208X08403
- Case number
- IAD97LA097
- 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: 54684e6776d63a38522927461241e4660ad633d0f448f800e62c6db0a40ed88c; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:16:59.724Z.