FTW97LA332 · Pitts S-2B
Pitts S-2B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Searcy County Airport (4A5) to Mountain View Wilcox Memorial Field (7M2)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA332
- 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
Pitts S-2B
- Aircraft type
- Pitts S-2
- 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
- N9QT
- Operator
- Ronald K. Miller · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Searcy County Airport (4A5), Marshall, ARTo Mountain View Wilcox Memorial Field (7M2), AR
- 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
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported the flight was inbound to the airport with a low fuel condition. The pilot had throttled back the airplane's power to '23' [inches manifold pressure] to continue toward the airport. En route, the pilot transmitted 'Oh, I just ran out and going down into a field, do not see the airport.' During the forced landing in a field, the airplane struck a fence. The pilot had flown the airplane for a total of 60 hours without any fuel system discrepancies. The pilot stated that his preflight preparation indicated that fuel was available at the airport where he had planned for refueling; however, upon landing at the airport with a low fuel condition, the pilot discovered that fuel was not available. Thinking that he had 5 gallons of fuel remaining, the pilot departed that airport for an airport 24 nautical miles away. Neither the Sectional Chart nor the Airport/Facility Directory indicate fuel availability at the airport chosen during the preflight planning.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate preflight planning. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA332
- Event ID
- 20001208X08642
- Case number
- FTW97LA332
- 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: fa8bffe49799accb9437ca4154b13b63daae86c3740d00d1e23cdc71fd82129b; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:45:12.714Z.