ERA12CA055 · Tacchi Torello F VANS AIRCRAFT RV10
Tacchi Torello F VANS AIRCRAFT RV10 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From OIJ · Hilliard, FL to Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA055
- 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
Tacchi Torello F VANS AIRCRAFT RV10
- Aircraft type
- Tacchi Torello VANS AIRCRAFT RV10
- 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
- N968TP
- Operator
- Tacchi Torello F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OIJ · Hilliard, FLTo Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS), Waycross, 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
- En route · descent
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, prior to departing on the 1-hour flight, he added 5 gallons of fuel to both the left and right fuel tanks and visually estimated the total fuel on board to be 23 gallons. About 4 minutes from the destination airport, the engine began to sputter. The pilot noticed that the right fuel tank gauge indicated empty, and the left indicated one-quarter full. The pilot then switched the fuel selector from the right tank to the left and proceeded to fly at a reduced power setting, but the engine began to sputter again, and the pilot selected a field in which to perform a forced landing. The airplane landed between two trees, resulting in substantial damage to both wings. The pilot stated there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA055
- Event ID
- 20111031X61401
- Case number
- ERA12CA055
- 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: 5cd4f637c9d5b0f0cad7344d46a9f21d477309052332f171dd9409541589a7e2; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:54:05.808Z.