ERA14LA355 · Pipistrel ALPHA TRAINER
Second Wind Aircraft Services Pipistrel ALPHA TRAINER · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Antiquers Aerodrome (FD08) to Antiquers Aerodrome (FD08)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA355
- 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
Pipistrel ALPHA TRAINER
- Aircraft type
- Pipistrel ALPHA TRAINER
- 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
- N10PU
- Operator
- Second Wind Aircraft Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antiquers Aerodrome (FD08), Delray Beach, FLTo Antiquers Aerodrome (FD08), Delray Beach, FL
- 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
- 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
According to the pilot, during the preflight inspection, he determined that the airplane had 45 percent of its fuel capacity (5.7 of 12.7 usable gallons). He determined the fuel amount by viewing the indicators on the cockpit panel and by "dipping" the tank and noting that the fuel level was just below the halfway mark on the dip stick. He found no water or grit in the fuel. The pilot reported that the flight was intended to be 1 hour long and that, per the airplane's performance criteria, he calculated that the engine would consume 3.6 gallons of fuel during the flight. The pilot took off on the local flight, and, when the airplane was inbound toward his home airport, the engine "abruptly stopped." He then diverted toward a closer airport and attempted to restart the engine without success. While approaching the airport, he made shallow turns to align the airplane with a runway, but the airplane's left wing impacted a tree, and the airplane subsequently impacted the airport perimeter fence. The cockpit GPS indicated that the flight was 0.9 hour long. No fuel was found in the fuel tanks or lines, and no evidence of fuel leakage was found at the accident site.
Probable cause
The pilot’s miscalculation of the fuel quantity requirements, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA355
- Event ID
- 20140724X43404
- Case number
- ERA14LA355
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-07-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c95764be71352c4b2b8c36ad86cf8b742e4ceea7f9edb5feb656f4b843cb5ac5; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:58:55.932Z.