ERA22LA420 · Yakovlev YAK-55M
Yakovlev YAK-55M · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Crystal River Airport (CGC) to Keystone Heights Airport (42J)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA420
- 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
Yakovlev YAK-55M
- Aircraft type
- Yakovlev YAK-55
- 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
- N307GS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crystal River Airport (CGC), Crystal River, FLTo Keystone Heights Airport (42J), Keystone Heights, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1992)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that prior to departure of the cross-country flight he performed a preflight inspection, which included using a dipstick to check the fuel quantity, though he later reported miscalculating the amount that was on-board. The flight departed with what he thought was 15 gallons of fuel for the intended 30-minute-long flight but when about 5 miles from the intended destination, the fuel pressure gauge decreased to 0 psi and the engine lost power rapidly. He realized he would be unable to land at his intended destination due to the airplane’s altitude and distance from it, so he performed an off-airport forced landing. The airplane touched down in a shallow ditch adjacent to a road and nosed over during the landing roll. He further stated that both fuel quantity gauges indicated near 0 at the moment of the loss of engine power. Examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the fuselage adjacent to the left main landing gear attach point. During recovery of the airplane no fuel was noted in the wing fuel tanks and postaccident examination revealed no fuel in the fuel service tank. Given this information, it is likely that the pilot exhausted the airplane’s fuel supply, which resulted in the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight fuel planning and preflight inspection of the airplane, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, a total loss of engine power, and the subsequent off-airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA420
- Event ID
- 20220915105947
- Case number
- ERA22LA420
- 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: b0829a0dcf067b76be34e5e5202df04e4d25e99fff74c070f730b6ffef4945d0; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:02:17.855Z.