IAD97LA107 · Diamond Aircraft Industries DA 20-A1
Diamond Aircraft Industries DA 20-A1 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Grand Strand Airport (CRE) to Slatington Airport (69N)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA107
- 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
Diamond Aircraft Industries DA 20-A1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-20
- 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
- N278PL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Strand Airport (CRE), N. MYRTLE BEACH, SCTo Slatington Airport (69N), PA
- 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; Pole
- 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
The pilot descended from 3,500 feet MSL to 1,500 feet, circled the airport for 15 minutes as he was unable to activate the runway lights. He decided to climb to 2,500 feet, and he diverted to another airport, but shortly thereafter, the engine lost power. During the forced landing to a lighted, golf course, the airplane collided with a telephone pole, and descended to the ground. He had refueled the airplane with 19.4 gallons. According to the FAA, examination of the wreckage revealed 4 ounces of fuel in the fuel tanks, and the carburetor was empty. The total capacity of the fuel tanks was 20.3 gallons, the useable fuel was 19.5 gallons, and the fuel consumption was 3.8 gallons per hour. The flight had been airborne for over 4 hours 43 minutes. The pilot said there was no mechanical malfunction with the airplane, and the accident could have been prevented if proper reserve, diversion, and emergency procedures were followed. A functional test of the airport lights was performed after the accident, and they operated satisfactory. According to the FAA, this was the pilot's first flight to this airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/ preparation which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA107
- Event ID
- 20001208X08651
- Case number
- IAD97LA107
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-08-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 53e7a6ff0f3289170c5baddda1dd14743ed24a2e622c73ca0de6f640c1b893dc; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:54:48.542Z.