MIA08LA180 · Cessna 182A
Skydive Kentucky Cessna 182A · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX) to Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA180
- 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
Cessna 182A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N5927B
- Operator
- Skydive Kentucky
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX), Elizabethtown, KYTo Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX), Elizabethtown, KY
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was fueled before the pilot's first flight that day. A total of 6.0 gallons of fuel were added to each fuel tank. After fueling, the pilot dipped each fuel tank using the provided dipstick, and determined that each tank contained between 7.0 and 7.5 gallons of usable fuel. He then flew one load of skydivers, returned, and attempted to secure the engine for fueling but was pressured by company personnel that he had enough fuel to make the second flight and that he needed to keep the airplane operating. He reluctantly kept the engine running and did not refuel the airplane, contrary to his typical procedure. The next load of skydivers were boarded, and the flight departed. The flight climbed to 11,000 feet where they were offloaded. He maneuvered away from the airport due to clouds, and when clear of them, proceeded to return. While flying at 2,000 feet close to the traffic pattern, the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion. Attempts to restart were unsuccessful. The pilot performed a forced landing in a corn field substantially damaging the airplane. Postaccident, a total of between 8.5 and 9.0 gallons of fuel were drained from the airplane. The total unusable fuel amount for all flight conditions is 10.0 gallons. A replacement propeller was installed and the engine was started and found to operate normally. The owner's manual used by the operator was incorrect, though the pilot knew the correct unusable amount.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was pressure from the company for the pilot to fly the second load of skydivers without refueling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA180
- Event ID
- 20080914X01459
- Case number
- MIA08LA180
- 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: 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: 1080878272d35676d899e28694c046b9b099cf5c93debe21b030ab657e2a532d; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:12:57.080Z.