MIA00LA253 · Aero Commander 100
Aero Commander 100 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Evans Field (AL94) to Jackson Municipal Airport (4R3)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA253
- 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
Aero Commander 100
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 100
- 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
- N2982T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Evans Field (AL94), Wilmer, ALTo Jackson Municipal Airport (4R3), Jackson, AL
- 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; Wire, transmission; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he had visually inspected the fuel tanks, and had 1 hour and 30 minutes of fuel remaining. In one statement the pilot said he had 15 gallons of fuel on board, and in another statement, he said that that he had 17 gallons of fuel on board. The pilot said that he and two passengers had departed at 09:30 AM, on a low level sight seeing flight, and at 10:25 AM the aircraft's engine started to operate at reduced power. He said the engine did not completely cease operating, but did not generate enough power to stay airborne. He said he tried to reach a field to make an emergency landing, but did not have enough altitude to reach it, so he selected a road, but clipped the power line with the left main gear, and hit two trees with each wing, during the forced landing. According to the FAA inspector, one of the passengers, who is also an FAA licensed mechanic assisted him in the postaccident examination, and they found a small amount of fuel, and a half teaspoonful of dirt in the damaged gascolator. The inspector also said that they found a small amount of fuel in the carburetor when it was examined. The inspector said that aircraft documentation revealed that the aircraft had a fuel capacity of 44 gallons, of which 4 is unusable. The mechanic/passenger said that based on what he experienced during the flight, as well during the postaccident examination of the aircraft, he believes that they ran out of fuel, and that during the examination they found a maximum of 4 to 5 gallons of fuel on the aircraft.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper preflight planning/decision and failure to ensure an adequate supply of fuel to safely complete the flight to his destination with adequate fuel reserves, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, subsequent engine failure, and a forced landing during, which the aircraft incurred substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA253
- Event ID
- 20001212X21812
- Case number
- MIA00LA253
- 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: 04e9fd2c8ef63ca8e5d41abe87a7270ebd768accf68ec82dcfb901cca792615c; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:06:09.397Z.