NYC07LA245 · Beech C-90
N515KJ Aviation Beech C-90 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 46A · Blairsville, GA to Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA245
- 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
Beech C-90
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft C-90
- 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
- N515KJ
- Operator
- N515KJ Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 46A · Blairsville, GATo Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV), Savannah, GA
- 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 · 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)
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, improper
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he started the accident flight with 500 pounds of fuel, which he thought was sufficient for the flight. Approximately 12 miles from the destination airport both engines lost power. The pilot was vectored to a turf strip 2,700 feet long. He spotted the airport through breaks in the cloud layer and landed on the wet grass. The airplane overran the runway and impacted trees. The pilot stated that he determined the fuel quantity by referring to the fuel quantity gauges, and that the right fuel quantity indicator "consistently reads two hundred pounds less than the left" fuel quantity indicator. Postcrash examination of the airplane showed that it contained no usable fuel and there was no evidence of in-flight or postaccident fuel leakage from the airplane. No evidence of precrash failure of the aircraft fuel system or engines was found.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's improper preflight planning and preparation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's reliance on inaccurate fuel gauges.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA245
- Event ID
- 20080611X00829
- Case number
- NYC07LA245
- 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. 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: 73bd5d868c837ef4a6f85db7e3687aafdb936fdd7ceecd86ef461c6d93f0abf3; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:25:20.067Z.