GAA16CA486 · Champion 7GC
Champion 7GC · Accident: fuel exhaustion during takeoff
From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ) to Palmer, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA486
- 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 7GC
- 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
- N4831E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, AKTo Palmer, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1959)
- 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
- Pole
- 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
According to the pilot of the single-engine airplane, shortly after takeoff and about 500 ft above ground level, the engine lost power. He reported that he attempted to restart the engine but was unsuccessful. The pilot made a forced landing in a hay field; the airplane landed hard and struck a telephone pole.
The pilot reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation Safety Inspector (ASI) that he did not preflight the airplane or check the fuel level before departure and that there should have been fuel in the tanks from the last flight in June 2016, 3 months before the accident.
The pilot reported to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Investigator-In-Charge (IIC) who received the initial notification that "he ran the airplane out of gas." He further reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have prevented normal operation.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings.
The NTSB IIC attempted to contact the pilot on multiple occasions but was informed by the FAA ASI that the pilot was out of the country for the winter.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection and failure to assess the airplane’s fuel quantity before departure, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA486
- Event ID
- 20160914X43846
- Case number
- GAA16CA486
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-09-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d9858b323f2857b6309e05780cd455f7fe3b7e23452947e0218f843e0a583c1a; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:16:10.804Z.