ERA15CA295 · Stol LLC JA30 SUPERSTOL
Stol LLC JA30 SUPERSTOL · Accident: fuel contamination before flight
From Walhalla, SC to West Union, SC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA295
- 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
Stol LLC JA30 SUPERSTOL
- Aircraft type
- Stol JA30
- 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
- N556TW
- Operator
- Stol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walhalla, SCTo West Union, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2014)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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 contamination
- 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 stated that he and the passenger were nearing the conclusion of a local flight when the engine began to "sputter and run rough." The engine momentarily ran smooth before it began to run rough a second time, followed by a total loss of power. The pilot maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing, and stated that engine power was restored just prior to impact with trees and terrain. The airplane came to rest upright, and sustained substantial damage to both wings and the empennage. During a postaccident wreckage examination, a 1-quart fuel sample was drained from the airplane, and about half of the sample was water. The pilot stated that prior to the accident flight, he had mistakenly fueled the airplane from a container of contaminated fuel.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power while maneuvering due to water contamination in the fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA295
- Event ID
- 20150804X85927
- Case number
- ERA15CA295
- 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: ced443e3b27f363204a08b15c03348e48064fbaf7e7337489c6e1393ebf7fb73; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:37:31.642Z.