ERA20CA201 · Jabiru J250-SP
Jabiru J250-SP · Accident: fuel related en route
From Crystal River Airport (CGC) to Key West International Airport (EYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA201
- 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
Jabiru J250-SP
- Aircraft type
- Jabiru J250
- 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
- N619J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crystal River Airport (CGC), Crystal River, FLTo Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2007)
- 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 related
- 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 systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting a cross country flight and departed the airport with slightly less than 36 gallons of fuel on board. About 1.5 hours into the flight, he noticed that the fuel tank quantities were dropping rapidly. The engine subsequently lost all power, and he set up for a ditching in the Gulf of Mexico. After ditching, the pilot and passenger were picked up by a U.S. Navy helicopter and transported to a local hospital for observation. The airplane eventually sank and was not recovered. The pilot also reported that the engine consumed about 5.5 to 6 gallons of fuel per hour and he suspected a breach of the fuel system prior to the loss of engine power. The airplane was configured with two wing tanks that gravity fed to a header tank; both tanks fed simultaneously utilizing an "On-Off" fuel selector in the cockpit.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to a fuel leak that could not be identified since the wreckage was not recovered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA201
- Event ID
- 20200601X20239
- Case number
- ERA20CA201
- 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: 5a877e18eda25286e9fff4cb1eb8f44a007c519f2b73455ea1c4cfa383fe2d13; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:42:55.412Z.