ERA20TA030 · Beech 76
GPS Global Flight School Beech 76 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Hilton Head Airport (HXD) to Miami Executive Airport (TMB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20TA030
- 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
Beech 76
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 76
- 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
- N6015Z
- Operator
- GPS Global Flight School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hilton Head Airport (HXD), Hilton Head, SCTo Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 40 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he estimated that he had sufficient fuel onboard before departing on the flight. About 20 miles from the destination, at 2,000 ft mean sea level (msl), the right engine suddenly lost power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine but was unsuccessful. The pilot then diverted toward a closer airport. About 500 ft msl, the left engine also suddenly lost power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and attempted a forced landing on a road. Shortly before touchdown, the left wing impacted a truck on the road and the airplane was substantially damaged.
Postaccident examination revealed that both fuel tanks were intact, and no fuel was leaking. About 1 cup and 1/2 cup of fuel were recovered from the left and right fuel tanks, respectively. Thus, it is likely that the pilot either incorrectly estimated his fuel state before departure or he underestimated the fuel required to reach the destination and exhausted the airplane's fuel supply, which resulted in a total loss of power to both engines.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a total loss of power to both engines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20TA030
- Event ID
- 20191104X62255
- Case number
- ERA20TA030
- 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 2019-11-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 072c17a783134027f52ce3758d771833d8051aa5496aa3c35f9aefad93e04921; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:33:23.340Z.