GAA15CA029 · Kerr John A KITFOX CLASSIC IV
Kerr John A KITFOX CLASSIC IV · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Logan-Cache Airport (LGU) to Logan-Cache Airport (LGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA029
- 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
- 0
- 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
Kerr John A KITFOX CLASSIC IV
- Aircraft type
- Kerr John KITFOX CLASSIC
- 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
- N195KF
- Operator
- Kerr John A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), Logan, UTTo Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), Logan, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 1996)
- 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 departed for a local flight with an indication on the fuel gauges of approximately one quarter per tank of fuel. The pilot stated he did not perform a visual inspection of the fuel tanks during his pre-flight procedures. About 30 minutes into the flight, the pilot returned to the airport. Prior to reaching the airport, the engine quit due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot selected a field for a forced landing. During the landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage frame.
The pilot reported there were no pre-impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe of engine that would have precluded normal operation.
An examination of the airplane at the accident site by an FAA air safety inspector revealed there was no fuel in the tanks.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection/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 GAA15CA029
- Event ID
- 20150331X85804
- Case number
- GAA15CA029
- 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: 41cd0c9e4a178a5dad63236b6ed28a10d23044f37a369183c8a05da88195ac90; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:12:09.461Z.