ERA09CA232 · Cessna 177RG
Fly for Food Cessna 177RG · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to Grand Strand Airport (CRE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA232
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N1838Q
- Operator
- Fly for Food
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CTTo Grand Strand Airport (CRE), N. Myrtle Beach, SC
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot visually inspected each fuel tank before departure but incorrectly believed the fuel tanks were full. Each fuel tank contained more than 22 gallons but less than 25 gallons usable fuel. When near the destination airport the engine experienced a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot proceeded towards an alternate airport, but was unable to land there and landed gear-up short of the intended runway. A total of 3 to 4 ounces of fuel were drained from the wing fuel tanks. No tank damage and no fuel leaks were noted from the fuel filler caps or fuel tank sump drain valves. Both fuel quantity gauges were noted to read empty when aircraft's battery power was applied. Although an engine-monitoring instrument with fuel flow capability was installed after the airplane was manufactured, installation instructions required placards to read that the airplane's fuel quantity gauges should be used to determine the fuel level in the tanks, and the original fuel flow gauge is the primary instrument for fuel flow. Postaccident examination of the instrument panel revealed neither placard was installed. Though the airplane was modified by installation of a turbocharger which required an increase in fuel flow, the increase was within the limits of the fuel flow transducer. The calculated average fuel flow during the accident flight was 10.3 gallons-per-hour, which was consistent with the average calculated fuel flows on two flights before the engine was overhauled. Fueling records at the intended destination reflect that on one occasion he landed with no more than 5.0 gallons of usable fuel remaining.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to divert to an alternate airport resulting in the total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's incorrect determination of the fuel load prior to the flight, the lack of placards near the engine-monitoring instrument, and the pilot's reliance of the on-board engine-monitoring instrument instead of the fuel quantity gauges.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA232
- Event ID
- 20090404X04940
- Case number
- ERA09CA232
- 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: 8788bfd92973a91cc117a59d65fecef4dc9a198be67bdaa483d718cbf2f8a1f5; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:54:08.311Z.