ERA22LA266 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5 · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
From Treasure Coast International Airport (FPR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA266
- 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
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N9577L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Treasure Coast International Airport (FPR), Fort Pierce, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1974)
- 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 final
- 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 contamination
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he departed visual flight rules and was returning to his home airport after work. On about a 3-mile final approach to the runway the pilot switched from the right to the left fuel tank and when he tried to add engine power found there was no response. He then switched back to the right tank and found the engine was still producing no power. The pilot executed a forced landing in a field, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings, tail, and fuselage. An inspection of the wing fuel tanks found the left tank to be empty and dry, and a sample from the right tank revealed all water with no visible fuel. When the carburetor was drained, it had about 2 tablespoons of liquid; half fuel and half water. The pilot stated that he did not check for fuel contamination before departing. He also reported that he fueled the airplane with fuel cans that were uncapped and exposed to rain over the weekend. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, during which he failed to detect water contamination in the fuel system, which resulted in a loss of engine power on approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA266
- Event ID
- 20220614105253
- Case number
- ERA22LA266
- 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, 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: a351f2afe7ed0c06ca18e4864bec5b721e6f1ef563a95dc93ba6e14318347d99; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:19:46.973Z.