ERA22LA381 · Cessna 182
Cessna 182 · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Orlando Executive Airport (ORL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA381
- 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
Cessna 182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N6241A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 accident flight was intended as a test flight after the airplane’s annual inspection. During the preflight inspection, the pilot visually checked the fuel and noted that there was less than he expected. While operating in the traffic pattern, the pilot experienced static on the radio and departed the airport area to troubleshoot. When he concluded these efforts and turned the airplane back toward the airport, the engine stopped producing power. Unable to restore engine power, the pilot performed a forced landing to a street. The pilot avoided vehicle traffic and power lines; however, the airplane struck trees and a masonry fence, resulting in substantial damage to both wings. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed no fuel in the airplane’s fuel tanks. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper 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 ERA22LA381
- Event ID
- 20220822105780
- Case number
- ERA22LA381
- 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: ebf7528c8d7f423931b160158fbb91b66d600aa077d473fb4aa529dff064f3db; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:46:10.293Z.