ERA15CA243 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1
Falcon Aviation Academy Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO) to Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA243
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 20 C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-20
- 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
- N353DC
- Operator
- Falcon Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO), Moreland, GATo Newnan Coweta County Airport (CCO), Moreland, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2005)
- 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
- 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 flight instructor stated that he and the private pilot receiving instruction had planned a long cross-country flight to build flight time. The cross-country flight was uneventful and they landed back at their home airport; however, they performed a touch-and-go to fly more and practice instrument approaches. After two approaches, the pilots were again approaching their home airport when the engine lost all power. The flight instructor was unable to restart the engine and performed a forced landing to a field. He further stated that he had miscalculated fuel consumption and that the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed substantial damage to the right wing. The inspector noted that the single fuel tank remained intact and was absent of fuel. One gallon of fuel was then added to the fuel tank and the engine started without hesitation and ran continuously. The inspector stated that according to Hobbs time, the airplane was operated for 3.6 hours since its last fueling.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's inaccurate 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 ERA15CA243
- Event ID
- 20150618X01302
- Case number
- ERA15CA243
- 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: 7dbe2af403dd10edd5c717e05cd782d852efdc55b555c1a8eb186c2c869865f1; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:26:11.693Z.