ERA11CA013 · Piper PA28 140
Piper PA28 140 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA013
- 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 140
- 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
- N57302
- Operator
- Benjamin L Price · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO), Auburn, ALTo Bowman Field (LOU), 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he estimated the airplane's fuel supply during his preflight planning by calculating the fuel consumed during the two previous flights. The pilot departed for his destination and planned to land with 45 minutes of fuel reserve. During the flight, the airplane encountered wind stronger than forecast and the airplane consumed more fuel than he had estimated. On descent for landing, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power and the pilot attempted to glide to the runway. As the airplane's airspeed and altitude decreased, the pilot opted to land on the freeway below. The airplane touched down in the middle lanes, skidded along the pavement, and came to rest in a ditch. During the accident sequence the airplane incurred damage to the right wing and horizontal stabilizer. Post-accident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that both tanks were absent of fuel and that there was no evidence of a preimpact mechanical anomaly.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA013
- Event ID
- 20101008X84830
- Case number
- ERA11CA013
- 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 2010-10-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bcccd5f182301b615a5221cf2da328acb4327740528bdc66356f4955d81c95d8; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:27:52.206Z.