ATL82DA088 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Okeechobee County Airport (OBE) to Macon, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL82DA088
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N9LT
- Operator
- Larry E. Thayer · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Okeechobee County Airport (OBE), Okeechobee, FLTo Macon, GA
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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, static
- 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, inaccurate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT REPORTED DEPARTING FT LAUDERDALE, FL WITH 4 HRS OF FUEL ON BOARD ON A 40 MINUTE FLIGHT TO OKEECHOBEE, FL. THE NEXT DAY, HE DEPARTED OKEECHOBEE WITHOUT REFUELING ON A FLIGHT TO MACON, GA. HE REPORTED THAT HE HAD TO CLIMB TO 10,500 FT TO AVOID CLOUDS AND MAINTAIN VFR. WHILE EN ROUTE, HE FOUND HIMSELF OVER A CLOUD LAYER. WITH 40 HOURS OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE, HE ELECTED TO DESCEND AND LAND AT MACON. THE PILOT WAS VECTORED AND CLEARED FOR AN ILS APPROACH. APPROACH CONTROL NOTED THAT THE PILOT DID NOT DESCEND BELOW 1600 FT AS HE APPROACHED AND OVERFLEW THE AIRPORT. THE AIRPORT ELEVATION WAS 354 FT. HE INITIATED A MISSED APPROACH, AND SHORTLY THEREAFTER, REPORTED THAT HE HAD RUN OUT OF FUEL. HE WAS VECTORED BACK TOWARD THE AIRPORT, BUT WAS UNABLE TO REACH THE RUNWAY. ABOUT THREE HOURS AND 5 MINUTES AFTER TAKEOFF THE PLANE STRUCK WIRES AS THE PILOT WAS LANDING IN A WHEAT FIELD. AFTER HITTING THE WIRES, HE WAS ABLE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL UNTIL AFTER TOUCHDOWN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL82DA088
- Event ID
- 20020917X01692
- Case number
- ATL82DA088
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: f4343bd3976e7da9a53cb4c6d2bb299f2b9373a44028044f635a9875e8f47069; retrieved 2026-09-24T03:29:17.177Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states the pilot "DEPARTED OKEECHOBEE WITHOUT REFUELING ON A FLIGHT TO MACON, GA" and ran out of fuel after a missed approach at Macon.