ERA20LA332 · Glasair 1RG
Glasair 1RG · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA332
- 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
- 0
- 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
Glasair 1RG
- Aircraft type
- Glasair 1
- 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
- N324DJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1990)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern crosswind
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot dropped off the airplane for repairs 6 months before the accident with the fuel tanks about half full of fuel. When the pilot picked up the airplane, he completed a preflight inspection and observed fuel in the fuel tanks but could not say how much fuel was present. He did not add any fuel. He took off and stayed in the traffic pattern, and after his third touch-and-go landing, the engine lost all power. The pilot circled to land on an intersecting runway, and the airplane stalled while on final approach to the runway. The airplane contacted the terrain short of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and the left wing. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any fuel in the tanks, and no preimpact mechanical malfunctions were identified. It is likely that the engine consumed the remaining fuel during the engine run-up, taxi, and subsequent touch-and-go landings, resulting in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection and fuel planning, 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 ERA20LA332
- Event ID
- 20200923X23629
- Case number
- ERA20LA332
- 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, cause areas. 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: 4c44be8aa6508c7ef507804c93a86d0f36cdd7a25df7c8a030cbedaf7be20d25; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:06:26.840Z.