ATL03LA029 · Mielec PZL-M-18
Mielec PZL-M-18 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM) to Hendry County, FL (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA029
- 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
Mielec PZL-M-18
- Aircraft type
- Mielec PZL-M-18
- 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
- N45051
- Operator
- Douglas Hodges
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM), Immokalee, FLTo Hendry County, FL (private airstrip)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 starvation; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
- 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, 20 minutes into the flight the engine flammed out while the airplane was in a left bank. As the pilot maneuvered for an emergency landing, the airplane's left wingtip struck trees, and the airplane collided with the ground. According to the pilot, in his preflight planning he did not compute the fuel consumption or reference the pilot operating handbook for the intended trip. The pilot stated he did not refuel the airplane after the initial load bearing trip. The pilot stated that this accident could have been prevented if he refueled the airplane before the initial load. According to the pilot this airplane is "notorious for poor fuel feeding when low on fuel".
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision by his improper fuel management which resulted in fuel starvation. Also causal was the pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in his failure to perform fuel consumption calculations and refueling of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA029
- Event ID
- 20030109X00037
- Case number
- ATL03LA029
- 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: f3e89a6935395242323469cd69f641f93f5afdae5e1e768c04a2d4fc3ca37599; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:43:47.822Z.