GAA19CA382 · Piper PA24 250
Claene Piper PA24 250 · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Brookeridge Air Park (LL22) to St Simons Island Airport (SSI)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA382
- 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 PA24 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N8294P
- Operator
- Claene
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brookeridge Air Park (LL22), Downers Grove, ILTo St Simons Island Airport (SSI), St Simons Island, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the flight, he forgot to lean the fuel mixture, which led to the airplane burning about 20 gallons per hour (gph) rather than the 15 gph he had used during his flight planning. The pilot decided to land and refuel at the next airport, but the engine lost power. He tried to restart the engine to no avail and then landed in a marsh with the landing gear retracted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly lean the fuel mixture in flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, a subsequent total loss of engine power, and a forced landing with the landing gear retracted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA382
- Event ID
- 20190630X21332
- Case number
- GAA19CA382
- 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: 7c14e9f0da80e882bb3f16fe67b4ebfa9096d6e8c771647d9fd2358361bbec22; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:20:38.232Z.