ERA18TA250 · American Aviation AA1 A
American Aviation AA1 A · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Oconee County Regional Airport (CEU) to Summerfield, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18TA250
- 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
American Aviation AA1 A
- Aircraft type
- American AA1
- 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
- N9218L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oconee County Regional Airport (CEU), Clemson, SCTo Summerfield, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1971)
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, on the day of the accident, he filled each tank of the newly purchased airplane with 12.5 gallons of fuel. On his first flight, after about 20 minutes of flying, he noticed he was running out of fuel. The pilot thought the fuel burn was very high and decided to land at the nearest airport; he added about 24 gallons of fuel. After departure and about 30 minutes of flying, he again noticed that the airplane was running out of fuel. He planned to land at the nearest airport; however, about 15 miles away from the airport, the engine lost total power. The pilot switched fuel tanks and turned on the electric boost pump, and the engine restarted. A few minutes later, the engine lost total power again. The pilot noticed both fuel tanks were out of fuel. During a forced landing in a field, the airframe was substantially damaged.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the carburetor float bowl plug was missing, which allowed fuel to leak out of the carburetor. Thus, the airplane's fuel consumption during the flight would have increased substantially and likely resulted in exhaustion of the airplane's available fuel supply at a greater-than-normal rate. Although the pilot reported that the airplane was recently inspected before he purchased it, no maintenance records were available for review, so the scope of work done to, or inspections of, the carburetor could not be determined. Further, the pilot's decision to depart on the accident flight leg after noting excessive fuel consumption on the previous leg contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
A fuel leak from the carburetor float bowl due to a missing plug, which resulted in excessive fuel consumption and a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to depart on the accident flight leg after noting the airplane's unexpectedly high fuel consumption during the previous leg.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18TA250
- Event ID
- 20180914X22852
- Case number
- ERA18TA250
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2466f9e11479442ed4e264b96e02e916c397a30c8a25a3c12a4a4a625e4ae3a6; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:14:45.117Z.