Air Carriers Rockwell International 500-S incident
Rockwell International 500-S · Incident: loss of engine power en route
From Bessemer Airport (EKY) to Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02IA079
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Rockwell International 500-S
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell 500
- 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
- N8536
- Operator
- Air Carriers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bessemer Airport (EKY), Bessemer, ALTo Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM), Mobile, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- None
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 stated the airplane was topped off with fuel. About an hour into the flight, power was lost in both engines. The pilot executed an emergency landing in a field and exited the airplane. The pilot stated she saw the fuel cap was off and hanging by its chain. Examination of the airplane revealed there was no fuel in the fuel system, and there was no evidence of fuel splatter on the wing, fuselage, or tail surfaces. The wing skin around the fuel fill port and chain attachment displayed no scratches nor dents. The fuel cap chain assembly was of the type designed to break free at 20 knots airspeed in the event a fuel cap is left unsecured, and the airplane was equipped with a non-siphoning fuel fill port. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunction, and no evidence of defect was observed with the fuel cap chain.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and preparation, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, loss of engine power in both engines, and subsequent forced landing in a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02IA079
- Event ID
- 20020419X00542
- Case number
- ATL02IA079
- 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, damage. 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: 9fc8fe41701bacc646b2626322ea24ef7251c5bfe3c2c3f2a366444d28bf23bb; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:03:52.399Z.