WPR14LA237 · Craig W Sherman SUPER GLASAIR TT
Craig W Sherman SUPER GLASAIR TT · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to Reno-Stead Airport (RTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA237
- 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
Craig W Sherman SUPER GLASAIR TT
- Aircraft type
- Craig W Sherman SUPER GLASAIR TT
- 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
- N400MC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo Reno-Stead Airport (RTS), Reno, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2013)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot, who was also the builder of the experimental airplane, departed with full fuel for the planned 2.5-hour cross-country flight. The airplane was equipped with two independent means of determining fuel quantity: a capacitance-based fuel quantity indication system that provided a direct measurement of the fuel quantity and a fuel totalizer that provided a calculated value using a pilot-entered initial fuel quantity and a sensed fuel flow rate. The pilot reported that both quantity indication systems were reliable and normally registered similar values. While in cruise, after he had been airborne for about 1.5 hours, the pilot noted that each system indicated a remaining fuel quantity of about 38 gallons, which was ample fuel for the completion of the trip. A few minutes later, the engine lost all power. The pilot noticed that the totalizer indicated about 37 gallons remaining but that the capacitance system indicated minimal or no fuel remaining. The pilot determined that he would be unable to reach the nearest airport and set up for a forced landing on a road. Due to motor vehicle traffic, the pilot landed on the side of the road, and the airplane sustained substantial damage due to impact with a bordering fence and vegetation.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that a B-nut in the fuel system had backed off. The loose B-nut was just downstream of a fuel pump, which allowed fuel to leak overboard at a location that could not be seen from the cockpit by the pilot. Because of the leak location, once the leak began, the totalizer-indicated fuel quantity became erroneous, but the capacitance-based system quantity remained accurate. The evidence indicated that once the leak began, the fuel was depleted rapidly. The pilot reported that when he was building the airplane, he installed the B-nut, torqued it to prevent loosening, and marked it with a torque stripe. The airplane had been flown about 56 hours since the B-nut was installed. Although maintenance activity conducted to repair an oil leak near the B-nut could have resulted in inadvertent and undetected loosening of the B-nut, the investigation was unable to determine a specific cause for the loosening of the B-nut.
Probable cause
The loosening of a B-nut in the fuel system which resulted in a rapid, undetected fuel leak and subsequent fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA237
- Event ID
- 20140608X03928
- Case number
- WPR14LA237
- 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: 0da194aa4312d95a0f0ecfe43e2e5cd754ac2eed9f6a2c76b752ccc30059ce9a; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:45:53.125Z.