CEN14CA124 · Cessna R182
Gelbach Aviation Cessna R182 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Joplin Regional Airport (JLN) to Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (JVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA124
- 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
Cessna R182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N6359T
- Operator
- Gelbach Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Joplin Regional Airport (JLN), Joplin, MOTo Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (JVL), Janesville, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1984)
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial rated pilot was repositioning the airplane from Texas to Wisconsin, with an intermediate stop in Missouri. He said he departed Texas with 88 usable gallons of fuel and flew for 3 hours and 10 minutes before landing in Missouri. The pilot purchased 30 gallons of fuel in Missouri but was unsure how many gallons were in the tanks when he departed since he did not visually check the tanks. While en route to Wisconsin, the pilot encountered severe turbulence and a strong crosswind. The pilot said that as he approached his destination airport, the fuel gauges were getting "lower and lower." He said that when he was about 20 minutes from landing (about 2 hours and 45 minutes into the flight), the engine ran out of gas and stopped producing power. The pilot made a forced landing to a snow covered field, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and firewall. According to a mechanic that recovered the airplane, no leaks were observed in the airplane's fuel system and about one pint of fuel was drained from the left wing fuel tank and the right wing fuel tank was empty.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from the pilot's inadequate pre-flight planning and decision-making.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA124
- Event ID
- 20140128X31323
- Case number
- CEN14CA124
- 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: 956308b8bf76506317687a2e0199746f931138dc306c8c91526eda0f22f7940a; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:17:09.438Z.