CHI04CA138 · Merkel Acro Sport II
Merkel Acro Sport II · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Monroe Municipal Airport (EFT) to Pecantonica, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA138
- 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
Merkel Acro Sport II
- Aircraft type
- Merkel ACRO SPORT
- 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
- N796DM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe Municipal Airport (EFT), Monroe, WITo Pecantonica, IL
- 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
- 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; 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with a power line and the terrain during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot stated the fuel quantity gauge in the airplane was inoperative and he uses a dip stick to check the fuel quantity. He stated he had 13 gallons of fuel on board when he departed from his private airstrip. The pilot flew approximately 65 minutes with two takeoffs and landings prior to the accident. The pilot estimated he had 7 gallons of fuel on board when he made his last takeoff. He stated the airplane usually burns 6 gallons per hour for normal flight and 7.5 gallons per hour when he is performing aerobatics. The airplane holds a total of 24 gallons of fuel of which 22 gallons are usable. Post accident inspection of the airplane revealed there were two gallons of fuel on board the airplane.
Probable cause
Inaccurate fuel consumption calculations which resulted in fuel exhaustion. Factors associated with the accident were the pilot's continued flight with an inoperable fuel quantity indicator and the wires which the airplane contacted during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA138
- Event ID
- 20040628X00876
- Case number
- CHI04CA138
- 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: cabeeb798a6faa8b0070681ae187c97e25aaf398045d1eec5a3e8d60f30f4b9f; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:23:23.561Z.