ERA13LA111 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Kaolin Field (OKZ) to Summit Airport (EVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA111
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4975S
- Operator
- Turen Clifford H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kaolin Field (OKZ), Sandersville, GATo Summit Airport (EVY), Middletown, DE
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1970)
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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 › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had planned a night instrument cross-country flight of 3 hours 45 minutes, with 5 hours 30 minutes of fuel onboard. About 3 hours 20 minutes into the flight, when the airplane was approximately 15 miles from the intended destination airport, the pilot diverted as the airplane ahead of him had to perform a missed approach due to a low cloud ceiling. The pilot diverted to a nearby airport with calm wind and an instrument landing system (ILS) approach; however, he attempted two GPS approaches to the opposite end of the 6,400-foot-long runway. He performed a missed approach on both GPS approaches before reaching the decision altitude of 306 feet above ground level (agl), when an overcast ceiling at 400 feet prevailed. The pilot did not attempt the ILS approach.
The pilot then diverted a second time, about 4 hours 20 minutes into the flight, to an airport that was not equipped with an ILS approach. He performed a GPS approach to that airport, down to about 250 feet GPS altitude, which was below the published minimum descent altitude of 310 feet agl, when an overcast ceiling of 300 feet prevailed, which resulted in a missed approach. After the missed approach, about 5 hours into the flight, the pilot reported to air traffic control that he was low on fuel. The pilot then diverted for a third time, to another airport that did not have an ILS approach, but he planned to attempt a VOR approach at that airport. The pilot could have declared an emergency and performed an ILS approach to a military airport that he overflew enroute to the VOR approach, and was in radio and radar contact with; however, he continued on and was cleared for the VOR approach about 5 hours 5 minutes into the flight and declared emergency 6 minutes later, reporting fuel exhaustion. At that time, the airplane was provided radar vectors to the military airport, but impacted wooded terrain about 2 miles prior to the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to land the airplane at multiple airports that were equipped with adequate instrument approach procedures while operating in low instrument meteorological conditions and his delay in declaring a fuel-related emergency, 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 ERA13LA111
- Event ID
- 20130114X61927
- Case number
- ERA13LA111
- 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: a2e375d7add3e8be4ae690005be2a7ef2476086073c48ce8992523b6ddb1fe09; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:52:04.154Z.