ERA14CA210 · Jerome A Baak CH 601XL
Jerome A Baak CH 601XL · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Broxton Bridge Plantation Airport (SC55) to Sumter Airport (SMS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA210
- 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
Jerome A Baak CH 601XL
- Aircraft type
- Jerome A Baak CH-601
- 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
- N121JN
- Operator
- Baak Jerome A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Broxton Bridge Plantation Airport (SC55), Ehrhardt, SCTo Sumter Airport (SMS), Sumter, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2012)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during the building process, he determined the unusable fuel amount in the fuel tanks with them uninstalled in the wings, placed on saw horses in a level attitude, but did not take into account wing dihedral, wing incidence, or pitch attitude. With respect to the accident flight he departed with what he thought was an adequate supply of fuel. When the flight was 3 to 4 miles from his destination with the fuel selector positioned to the right tank, the engine quit due to fuel starvation. He repositioned the fuel selector to the left tank which restored engine power and continued towards the destination airport. About 1 minute later the engine quit again; the fuel gauges at that time indicated 1/8 capacity in each tank. He established best glide airspeed and after realizing he was unable to land at the destination airport, he executed a forced landing in a marsh short of the runway. After touchdown the airplane nosed over and although the emergency locator transmitter (ELT) had activated, the wreckage wasn't spotted until an airplane that was landing flew over at 1645. During rescue of the pilot the right wing was cut off but no fuel leakage was reported. Following recovery of the airplane, the left fuel tank which was not breached did not contain any fuel. Additionally, only a teaspoon of fuel was found in the fuel strainer and the carburetor bowl was dry.
Advisory Circular (AC) 90-89A, titled, "Amateur-Built Aircraft and Ultralight Flight Test Handbook" dated May 24, 1995, provides guidance in part for determining unusable fuel amount, and the procedures call for placing the airplane at an angle 5 degrees above the highest anticipated climb angle and to disconnect the fuel line to the carburetor. When the fuel flow stops, the amount remaining in the fuel tank is considered as unusable fuel.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the fuel exhaustion was the pilot's failure during the building process to properly determine the unusable quantity of fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA210
- Event ID
- 20140428X95502
- Case number
- ERA14CA210
- 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: 51f3b47ed84f64f2bf5e64e0b0cf195cc82574c82798067344db831679565f08; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:33:07.400Z.