ERA10CA194 · Piper PA-28-180
Williamson Flying Club Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Laconia Municipal Airport (LCI) to Williamson Sodus Airport (SDC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA194
- 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
Piper PA-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3442R
- Operator
- Williamson Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laconia Municipal Airport (LCI), Laconia, NHTo Williamson Sodus Airport (SDC), Williamson/Sodu, NY
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure the pilot obtained a standard preflight weather briefing. Based on the pilot's input pertaining to flight performance parameters, the flight's duration was calculated to be about 3 hours, with an estimated fuel consumption of 29.3 gallons; this fuel consumption rate was based on the pilot's historical experience of 10.0 gallons per hour. The pilot stated that the flight departed with 34 gallons of usable fuel on board. After takeoff, the pilot obtained visual-flight-rules flight following and proceeded toward the destination airport. The engine experienced a total loss of power and, approximately 3 hours 7 minutes after takeoff, the pilot advised the controller that she had exhausted the airplane's fuel supply. The pilot maneuvered the airplane toward a field and the airplane collided with a tree during the descent. Inspection of the accident site and wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed the left wing was separated. No fuel was found in either main fuel tank and there was no evidence of leakage from either fuel filler cap or sump drain. A total of 1.5 ounces of fuel were drained from the carburetor bowl. Inspection of the engine revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA194
- Event ID
- 20100329X71236
- Case number
- ERA10CA194
- 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: 06a95e4752e6324cd90ecb79d10e3be0b100eac3d6da3b50f96cc2b9bb29d844; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:48:10.877Z.