GAA15CA022 · Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT
Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Columbus Municipal Airport (BAK) to Crawfordsville Regional Airport (CFJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA022
- 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
Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N900TM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbus Municipal Airport (BAK), Columbus, INTo Crawfordsville Regional Airport (CFJ), Crawfordsville, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1978)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was being ferried for maintenance of its fuel system. About 15 minutes into the flight, the pilot reported that he intentionally emptied the right main fuel tank to facilitate maintenance at the destination airport. Subsequently, the airplane lost engine power and he maneuvered the airplane for landing in an open field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right rear wing spar.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration aviation safety inspector who examined the airplane at the accident site, the fuel tanks were found void of fuel. The right tip tank had some fuel, but no usable fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, and a loss of engine power en-route.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA022
- Event ID
- 20150327X81708
- Case number
- GAA15CA022
- 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: 856ea488be4f809d0ca3a175a8eb374499fa2c26ba36c21779b09d0b56a23351; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:11:13.637Z.