GAA16CA072 · Skaggs Ronnie Lynn RANS S6S
Skaggs Ronnie Lynn RANS S6S · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Fallston Airport (W42) to KCBE · Cumberland, MD
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA072
- 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
Skaggs Ronnie Lynn RANS S6S
- Aircraft type
- Skaggs Ronnie Lynn RANS S6S
- 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
- N531VS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fallston Airport (W42), Fallston, MDTo KCBE · Cumberland, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2007)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 pilot reported that he had filled the airplane's fuel tanks the day before the cross-country flight, but did not visually check the fuel level in the tanks during the preflight inspection. The pilot reported that he estimated the flight would take about 1.5 hours, and full fuel tanks would have given him more than 3 hours of flight time.
The pilot reported that he was 10 miles from his destination when the engine sputtered and lost power and he made an off-airport landing. The pilot reported that he saw trees in front of him and attempted a left turn to avoid the trees and impacted terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The pilot reported that prior to the loss of engine power, there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot stated that he estimated about a gallon of fuel was drained from the wing fuel tanks after the accident and the unusable fuel for the airplane is 1.25 gallons.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to visually inspect the fuel level during the preflight inspection, which resulted in fuel starvation and a subsequent off-field landing and impacted terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA072
- Event ID
- 20151209X14947
- Case number
- GAA16CA072
- 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: c50fde4a3cc4c5b7d1333679eb6612bc3f7ceb5a590eef5662db3ebe608f3f0b; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:01:10.072Z.