NYC00LA205 · Lake LA-4-200
Lake LA-4-200 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Aiken Regional Airport (AIK) to 6L4
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA205
- 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
Lake LA-4-200
- Aircraft type
- Lake LA-4
- 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
- N12SF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aiken Regional Airport (AIK), Aiken, SCTo 6L4
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 consumption calculations, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed at 1130 for a cross-country flight with 40 gallons of fuel on board. He anticipated that the flight would take 3 hours, and he had 4 hours of fuel on board. During the flight, the pilot had to divert around his planned route for inclement weather. When he was about 1 mile from the airport, he entered the downwind leg of the traffic pattern and the engine lost power. The pilot determined he could not make it to the runway and landed on an adjacent road, at 1450. The pilot reported that the fuel gauge read empty while on the approach. Examination of the airplane revealed the fuel tank was completely dry. In addition, no fuel was found in the fuel lines or the fuel flow divider. When 4 gallons of fuel was added to the airplane, the engine started without hesitation and ran continuously.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion of the engine due to improper fuel consumption calculations performed by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA205
- Event ID
- 20001212X21590
- Case number
- NYC00LA205
- 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: 0c48f3d476d6d02b47e096869e402183cebe3a131286ef8b400dcd198415eb9d; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:40:05.309Z.