ERA09CA462 · Unknown Sabre-Trike
Unknown Sabre-Trike · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Crandall, GA to Crandall, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA462
- 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
Unknown Sabre-Trike
- Category
- Weight-Shift
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Gary M. Kerr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crandall, GATo Crandall, 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
- 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 pilot stated that he planned a short duration local flight and while on approach returning to land, the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion. He initiated an approach to a farmer’s pasture and in the process landed hard on the nose wheel which broke off. The weight-shift aircraft then nosed over.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA462
- Event ID
- 20090813X94615
- Case number
- ERA09CA462
- 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 2009-08-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6d2e71d5ef7c8e47c8317644c13001284e42efc14a84c65c6ae4f3e2445861b3; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:48:03.358Z.