CEN19FA005 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) to Tom B. David Field (CZL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA005
- 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
- 1 · 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 PA28 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N180QT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FLTo Tom B. David Field (CZL), Calhoun, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1967)
- 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a cross-county flight in day visual meteorological conditions. According to the airplane's co-owner, who spoke with the pilot before he departed on the accident flight, the airplane had about 34 gallons of fuel onboard at the time of departure. Based on his experience, this was sufficient for about 2 hours 20 minutes of flight. He suggested that the pilot top off the airplane's fuel tanks before departure. When he watched the pilot taxi the airplane past the fuel facility and take off, he subsequently sent the pilot a text message stating, "Do hope you had a fuel stop planned." The pilot replied that he would stop if he needed to. GPS data indicated that the pilot did not land at any point between the departure airport and accident site, though he passed near one airport, and directly over another airport, both of which had fuel services available. A witness reported that the airplane's engine stopped then restarted. Another witness reported that the airplane's engine was surging. The airplane subsequently impacted power lines. The duration of the accident flight was 3 hours and 10 minutes.
Postaccident examination revealed that both fuel tanks were intact; the left wing tank was empty, and the right wing tank contained residual fuel. Examination of the fuel system and the engine revealed no anomalies. Given the absence of fuel in the airplane's fuel tanks at the accident site, the duration of the flight, and the known quantity of fuel onboard at the time of departure, the accident is consistent with a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Although the pilot passed over two other airports with fuel available, he chose to continue the flight beyond the airplane's endurance given the fuel at departure.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight and inflight fuel planning and his decision to continue flight without stopping for fuel, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA005
- Event ID
- 20181013X22152
- Case number
- CEN19FA005
- 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: 2a25211729d60aa67688b6bab7fbb255d6253bc9714d4f4bac8451b7d0b7ae9f; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:49:28.416Z.