LAX08LA137 · Grumman G-164
Chuck Jones Flying Service Grumman G-164 · Accident: fuel exhaustion during initial climb
From Butte City, CA (no airport) to Butte City, CA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA137
- 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
Grumman G-164
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N703Y
- Operator
- Chuck Jones Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Butte City, CA (no airport)To Butte City, CA (no airport)
- 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
- Initial climb
- Defining eventThe 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Seconds after taking off for an aerial agricultural application flight, the airplane lost all engine power while about 15 feet above the ground. The pilot made a forced landing in a field and the airplane impacted a berm during the landing roll, nosed over, and came to rest in water. Recovery personnel reported finding little evidence of fuel in the area surrounding the airplane, and no fuel in the airplane's tanks. The pilot and operator reported that the airplane should have had 30 gallons of fuel on board during its last refueling, which occurred three application flights prior to the accident flight. The operator also reported that they did not keep fueling records of the individual fueling events when flying from remote locations and an exact amount could not be determined. The Federal Aviation Administration coordinator examined the engine and accessories. He reported finding no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during takeoff due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to verify the fuel quantity prior to flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA137
- Event ID
- 20080519X00696
- Case number
- LAX08LA137
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-05-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 83775d252f951eae20e650eb7f2eb69ebbf3887fa8bd9c3e3f4bf5740fa0ff03; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:40:15.313Z.