CEN18LA075 · Piper PA 28-236
Piper PA 28-236 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Memorial Field Airport (HOT) to Ardmore Downtown Executive Airport (1F0)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA075
- 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
Piper PA 28-236
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4345K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Memorial Field Airport (HOT), Hot Springs, ARTo Ardmore Downtown Executive Airport (1F0), Ardmore, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1984)
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed on a cross-country flight; he reported that 35 to 40 gallons of fuel were in the airplane's fuel tanks for a flight that he thought would require 20 gallons of fuel. As the airplane was nearing the destination, the pilot was concerned about the fuel level in the left tank because the fuel gauge indicated that the tank was between one-quarter full and empty and no fuel remained in the right tank, which the pilot had intentionally run dry. The pilot elected to divert to ensure that the airplane would have adequate fuel to complete the flight to the destination. Upon landing at the diversion airpark, the pilot learned that the airpark had no fuel. The pilot subsequently took off from the airpark, and the airplane reached an altitude of about 1,500 ft above ground level when the engine "sputtered." The pilot attempted to return to the airpark, but the airplane could not clear the trees in the area. The pilot attempted a forced landing, but the airplane impacted the trees and subsequently impacted terrain. The airplane was in an inverted position at the time of impact.
The pilot reported that the left tank "apparently goes empty somewhere prior to the E [empty] on the fuel gauge." However, the pilot did not mention whether he visually checked the amount of fuel before leaving the diversion airpark. Thus, the pilot likely departed without sufficient fuel on board to complete the flight to another diversion airpark. Further, the fuel amount was lower than the pilot expected during the flight, which was consistent with poor preflight fuel planning and in-flight fuel monitoring.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight fuel planning and in-flight fuel monitoring and his decision to take off with an unverified amount of fuel, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a subsequent impact with trees during an attempted forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA075
- Event ID
- 20180116X94233
- Case number
- CEN18LA075
- 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: eaca285c567c8669e293990932bf0bbe79d38817bbcac96089fab6dfd466cf54; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:19:01.199Z.