ERA10CA214 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Oakland Southwest Airport (Y47) to Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA214
- 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 PA28 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N4247T
- Operator
- Allen Friedlander
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland Southwest Airport (Y47), New Hudson, MITo Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF), Louisville, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 received a weather briefing prior to departing on the 277-nautical mile cross-country flight. The airplane's departure fuel level was "above the tabs, but not full." Information from the manufacturer's Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) indicated that, when the fuel level was at the tabs, the fuel quantity was 35 gallons. The maximum usable fuel capacity was 48 gallons. The pilot stated that the weight of his baggage precluded him from operating with full fuel tanks, and that he encountered "stronger than expected headwinds" along the route of flight. About 2030, when the airplane was 1 mile from the destination airport, the engine "quit." The pilot executed a forced landing on a road, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. Examination by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed that each of the airplane's fuel tanks contained approximately 1 to 2 cups of fuel. No fuel was found in the gascolator or the carburetor. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures, and in an interview with the FAA inspector, the pilot stated that he should have stopped for fuel en route. According to the POH, at 75 percent power, and operating with a "lean mixture," the airplane's fuel consumption rate was 10 gallons per hour.
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 ERA10CA214
- Event ID
- 20100407X74648
- Case number
- ERA10CA214
- 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 2010-04-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 344a9a021f950fe2832479eed1e3ef4ce91d36ae27d94ffe73cf6b5541ef5051; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:50:15.025Z.