CEN15LA271 · Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164B B
Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164B B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Bloomfield Municipal Airport (84Y) to Bloomfield Municipal Airport (84Y)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA271
- 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 164B B
- 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
- N48687
- Operator
- Barney Steven K
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bloomfield Municipal Airport (84Y), Bloomfield, NETo Bloomfield Municipal Airport (84Y), Bloomfield, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed on a local agricultural application flight with what he believed was sufficient fuel on board for 2 hours of flight. He stated that he based this assumption solely on viewing the fuel quantity gauge and did not insert a stick in the fuel tank to check the fuel amount before departing on the accident flight. About 1 hour 15 minutes into the flight, the airplane lost engine power, and the pilot subsequently conducted a forced landing on muddy and water-logged terrain. The airplane then nosed over and sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported that, during a postaccident examination, the fuel quantity gauge read 1/4 full even though the fuel system was actually empty. The preflight procedures contained in the airplane's flight manual included a fuel quantity check, which was to be accomplished by opening the fuel cap and visually checking the fuel level, and a fuel gauge check to observe the fuel gauge for proper reading. The pilot did not verify the fuel quantity in accordance with these procedures before departing.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power during a low-level aerial application flight due to fuel exhaustion following the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection that led to his assumption that sufficient fuel was on board for the flight based on his reliance on a fuel gauge that indicated the incorrect fuel level.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA271
- Event ID
- 20150615X53251
- Case number
- CEN15LA271
- 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: 79018016d5f70d10178dde667551fa6afcc92f228b45bf9d1cdffac35ca3eaac; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:25:27.652Z.