GAA15LA284 · Champion 7ECA
Champion 7ECA · Accident: fuel exhaustion during takeoff
From Talkeetna Airport (TKA) to Talkeetna Airport (TKA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15LA284
- 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
Champion 7ECA
- Aircraft type
- Champion 7
- 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
- N9132L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna Airport (TKA), Talkeetna, AKTo Talkeetna Airport (TKA), Talkeetna, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot reported that, before the flight, he topped off both fuel tanks. The pilot subsequently began conducting stop-and-go and touch-and-go landings at a local airport to gain tailwheel time. He reported that, after takeoff from a stop-and-go landing, the engine suddenly failed. The pilot attempted to troubleshoot the loss of engine power but was unsuccessful. During the forced landing beyond the departure end of the runway, the airplane's wings struck trees, and the fuselage impacted terrain at a steep, left-wing-low attitude.
The pilot reported that, at the time of the total loss of engine power, he had 1 hour of fuel remaining, the left wing fuel gauge was covered by headliner material and was not visible, and the right fuel gauge indicated a quarter full. The pilot added that, during the flight, the engine "ran rough" a few times and that, once during the flight, the engine "dropped a couple of hundred revolutions per minute."
The owner/operator reported that, during rental operations, customers were informed "to plan on a 7 gallon per hour fuel burn" and that the airplane had a 26-gallon fuel capacity. He estimated that the pilot had been operating the airplane for just over 4 hours at the time of the accident.
Despite the pilot's statement, during examination of the wreckage at the accident site, no usable fuel was found in the fuel tanks, and no fuel was found on the ground. Based on the evidence, the pilot did properly calculate the fuel consumption rate, likely failing to take into account the extra fuel burned during the multiple touch-and-go and stop-and-go landings, and he did not properly monitor the fuel in flight, which led to him continuing to fly the airplane until the fuel was exhausted despite signs of an engine problem and resulted in the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly calculate the fuel consumption rate and to properly monitor the fuel status in flight and his decision to continue the flight despite signs of an engine problem, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15LA284
- Event ID
- 20150929X85735
- Case number
- GAA15LA284
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-09-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 87a8bb8c4ffbe15609c5e676c711adcceac01abedb879a1fb911dc6d995185cf; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:50:28.252Z.