WPR15LA160 · Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164A
Richter Aviation Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164A · Accident: fuel exhaustion during initial climb
From Maxwell, CA (private airstrip) to Maxwell, CA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA160
- 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
Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N8875H
- Operator
- Richter Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Maxwell, CA (private airstrip)To Maxwell, CA (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
Just after takeoff on the agricultural application flight, the commercial pilot was positioning the airplane to spray a rice field. About 200 ft above ground level, the pilot heard a loud pop, and the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot turned the airplane to land on a dirt road, but it was too narrow; the right main landing gear contacted mud on the side of the road, and the airplane subsequently nosed over and came to rest inverted. Recovery personnel reported no residual fuel on the ground around the accident site, and about one half gallon of fuel was recovered from the airplane.
The pilot stated that the airplane had not been refueled on the day of the accident and that he departed on the flight with less than a half tank of fuel.
The postaccident engine examination revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The loss of engine power was likely due to fuel exhaustion, and given that the loss of power occurred just after takeoff, it is likely that the pilot did not verify the amount of fuel onboard before departing on the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper preflight inspection and fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA160
- Event ID
- 20150514X60500
- Case number
- WPR15LA160
- 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: c19df7f8500f9da3aebbff9f84ec09be5d8275dbf2252e3264eac7351673096b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:18:57.162Z.