NYC04CA001 · Williams RV-4
Williams RV-4 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV) to Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04CA001
- 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
Williams RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Williams RV-4
- 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
- N475F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV), Danville, ILTo Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW), Morgantown, WV
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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; Pole
- 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 › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was en route to his home base, with a homebuilt kit airplane when the engine lost power, after about 2.4 hours of flight. During the forced landing the airplane struck an electrical pole. Examination revealed the fuel tanks were empty, and there was no evidence of a fuel spill on the ground, although both fuel tanks were ruptured. There was no blue staining on the top of the wings, or under the fuselage, although heavy rains had fallen for two days between the accident, and its examination by the FAA. There were no loose fittings on the fuel line leading to the engine. The spark plugs were slate gray in appearance, and thumb compression was found in all cylinders. The pilot reported that the fuel gauges were inaccurate and fuel consumption on the 2 previous flights had averaged between 8.5 and 9.5 gallons per hour. At the last refueling, the pilot had requested that the fuel servicing person leave about 1 inch of space at the top of the fuel tank. The pilot reported that when he preflighted the airplane, he thought the fuel level was down about 1 inch from the top of the tank, The fuel tanks were reported to hold 16 gallons in each wing. A representative of the kit manufacturer reported that the fuel tank capacity could vary by a few gallons, along with the amount of unusable fuel due to variations in fuel tank assembly by builders. The experimental operating limitations issued by the FAA for the airplane required an operative fuel indicating system to indicate the amount of fuel in each tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to operate without accurate fuel gauges, which resulted in a power loss due to fuel exhaustion, and an off airport landing
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04CA001
- Event ID
- 20031113X01895
- Case number
- NYC04CA001
- 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: 4c57c0d5042d10a818d2839784ba8dce1f2e7ccdc47c998ad1d4c6b051fff9d1; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:24:51.856Z.