ERA21LA393 · Vans RV8
Vans RV8 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA393
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Vans RV8
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV8
- 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
- N388RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), West Palm Beach, FLTo Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM), Immokalee, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 2000)
- 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
- 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 reported that during the preflight inspection he was unable to measure the fuel quantity with a dipstick, due to the tailwheel airplane’s tail-low attitude as it sat on the ramp. He stated that he “rocked the wing back and forth…to see the fuel sloshing around” and estimated that the left tank contained 9-10 gallons, and the right tank had “less fuel visible.” The purpose of the flight was to refuel the airplane at the destination airport, where fuel was less expensive. He estimated a fuel burn of 4-5 gallons for the planned 30-minute flight.
While enroute, the pilot diverted his course to avoid rain showers that were developing before he ultimately decided to return to the departure airport. During the return, the engine began to “sputter,” at which time he turned on the electric fuel pump and switched the fuel selector from the left tank to the right tank. Sometime after, the engine sputtered again, and he decided to perform an off-airport landing. During landing the airplane struck a fence rail, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings. A post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that the damaged fuel tanks were devoid of fuel, with no indications of fuel having leaked from them, and no odor of fuel was noted at the scene.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection and improper fuel planning which resulted in fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA393
- Event ID
- 20211029104183
- Case number
- ERA21LA393
- 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: 7b1d8f917700d0f12b79ca36bb309eaf45c6d2c1a04134360f58ac1a1b37c9f5; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:42:34.675Z.