ERA10LA457 · Aero Commander 560E
Aero Commander 560E · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Herlong Airport (HEG) to Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA457
- 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
Aero Commander 560E
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 560
- 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
- N175SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Herlong Airport (HEG), Jacksonville, FLTo Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG), Jacksonville, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The multi-engine airplane was being flown to an airport about 15 miles from the departure airport for avionics maintenance. The pilot stated that he performed a preflight inspection, which included checking the fuel tanks for water contamination. After a normal takeoff, the airplane was in a climb between 1,500 and 2,000 feet mean sea level when the left engine surged and lost all power. Shortly thereafter, the right engine began to surge and also lost all power. The airplane was substantially damaged when it struck trees during an ensuing forced landing to an interstate. Examination of the airframe and both engines did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions. A 1.5-gallon fuel sample drained from the airplane's fuel tanks contained about 2 cups of water. The airplane had been operated for about 24 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed about 6 weeks prior to the accident. The accident flight was the first flight after the airplane had been refueled, but only partially, about 3 weeks earlier.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a total loss of power in both engines during climb due to fuel contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA457
- Event ID
- 20100831X14941
- Case number
- ERA10LA457
- 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: 619acc6ec456c02a934ce135dd3ddc7fd10b04670b8197ed4b98e3b377508d8a; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:01:51.416Z.