ERA17LA336 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Barrow County Airport (WDR) to Barrow County Airport (WDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA336
- 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
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N53393
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, GATo Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
According to the private pilot, who was the owner of the airplane, the airplane had been parked for an extended period, and he was preparing it for an annual inspection which was nearly 4 years overdue. On the day before the accident flight, he charged the airplane's battery and ran the engine for about 30 minutes. Before departing on the accident flight, he performed a preflight inspection of the airplane, measured the level of fuel in each tank, sampled the fuel tanks and fuel strainer for contaminants, and ran the engine for about 5 to 7 minutes with no anomalies noted.
The pilot taxied the airplane for takeoff, performed the before-takeoff checks, and departed. When the airplane reached about 200 ft above ground level, the engine "sputtered" and then stopped producing power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field beyond the departure end of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings.
The left-wing fuel tank was breached by impact and contained no fuel. The right tank was intact and contained about 8 gallons of fuel. The gascolator was drained, and the first 4 ounces drained were clear water; the remaining 4 ounces were a mixture of water and fuel.
The carburetor was separated from the engine at impact and was reattached with an adhesive to facilitate an engine operational check. An external fuel tank was then plumbed to the carburetor, and the engine was started on the airframe utilizing the airplane's own battery. The engine started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously without interruption. Had the pilot conducted an adequate preflight inspection, he would have likely detected the water contamination in the fuel system.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in undetected water in the fuel system and a total loss of engine power during the initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA336
- Event ID
- 20170927X75817
- Case number
- ERA17LA336
- 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 2017-09-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 33e4328576b2800cc9b8b0088db6da09ae84fb034f9e77515d77a85969809343; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:53:43.870Z.