ERA10LA127 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: fuel related en route
From Georgetown County Airport (GGE) to Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA127
- 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 150G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N3995J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown County Airport (GGE), Georgetown, SCTo Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ), St. Augustine, FL
- 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
- 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 related
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot refueled the airplane and departed. While cruising at altitudes varying between 6,500 feet and 2,500 feet above ground level, he noticed that the right fuel gauge was fluctuating around the empty indication and the left fuel gauge was giving intermittent indications. The pilot elected to land at an airport that was en route to his destination. As the airplane approached the airport, the engine experienced a total loss of power due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot made a forced landing to a highway about 600 yards short of the airport and, after maneuvering to avoid traffic, the airplane struck road signs and came to rest in a ditch. The pilot stated that he always based fuel consumption on time, altitude and temperature, and monitored it with a stopwatch. Subsequent fuel consumption calculations indicated that at the rpm setting provided by the pilot, the airplane should have had well in excess of 30 minutes of fuel onboard when the engine ceased operating, about 2.5 hours after takeoff. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed fuel stains under the right under-wing area, flap, and fuselage. The stained was a result of fuel leakage due to a failure of the right wing fuel tank sending unit gasket.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion caused by the failure of the right wing fuel tank sending unit gasket, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA127
- Event ID
- 20100201X70053
- Case number
- ERA10LA127
- 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: 5c87cdf6505bc5ae7735846f6867f6dc2363eb760f5177f3615454bf39a5db61; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:39:30.095Z.