ERA11LA142 · Kennedy Michael M LANCAIR 320
Kennedy Michael M LANCAIR 320 · Accident: fuel contamination while maneuvering
From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU) to Barrow County Airport (WDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA142
- 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
Kennedy Michael M LANCAIR 320
- Aircraft type
- Kennedy Michael LANCAIR 320
- 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
- N351E
- Operator
- Reister William L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, GATo Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, GA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After about 25 minutes of flight, the pilot began transferring fuel from the left and right main fuel tanks to the 10-gallon header tank which fed the engine. Ten minutes after completing that operation, the engine began to lose power. The pilot activated the fuel boost pumps and adjusted the throttle and mixture controls. He stated that the engine surged as though it was running out of fuel. When engine power could not be restored, the pilot performed a forced landing to the median of a divided highway, and a hard landing resulted in substantial damage to the left wing tip, rudder, and propeller. A postacciddent examination of the fuel filter revealed traces of sediment and water, while the gascolator bowl contained water and debris. The filter and bowl were then reinstalled and an engine run was completed using the airplane’s own battery and fuel system. The engine started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously without interruption.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection and failure to detect water-contaminated fuel, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA142
- Event ID
- 20110214X15817
- Case number
- ERA11LA142
- 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, coordinates. 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: 17bb2f1fc8a7d1476f17db1f7e24062d0cfb70e95d545e6f6e0bc2b04e66758b; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:48:23.841Z.