ATL03LA026 · Preceptor Aircraft Ultra pup
Preceptor Aircraft Ultra pup · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during an emergency descent
From Evansville Regional Airport (EVV) to Smithville Municipal Airport (0A3)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA026
- 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
- 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
- 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
Preceptor Aircraft Ultra pup
- Aircraft type
- Preceptor ULTRA PUP
- 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
- N5178D
- Operator
- Fredrick W. Whitaker · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Evansville Regional Airport (EVV), Evansville, INTo Smithville Municipal Airport (0A3), Smithville, TN
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel system › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he had just purchased the airplane and was returning to his home base. Approximately 14 miles from the Smithville Municipal Airport, Smithville, Tennessee, the engine began to run rough. The pilot applied carburetor heat and the engine stopped. The pilot executed an emergency landing in a field. No fuel was found in the left or right wing tanks. Three gallons of fuel was drained from the header tank, and no blockages were observed. The pilot did not report any mechanical or flight control malfunctions prior to the accident. The pilot stated that he preflight planned for 2.5 hours, a fuel capacity of 12 gallons. The pilot had been flying for approximately 2 hours.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight fuel planning of fuel resulted in fuel starvation, the total loss of engine power and the subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA026
- Event ID
- 20030103X00006
- Case number
- ATL03LA026
- 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, coordinates. 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: ccf935652b405e4606ef1aa78812b6ab9050473ddbc371c1beaf1ad0ca8f61d9; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:47:12.014Z.