ERA24FA103 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. GA-7
Grumman American AVN. CORP. GA-7 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Piasecki Heliplex Heliport (PN34) to McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24FA103
- 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
- 1 · 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
Grumman American AVN. CORP. GA-7
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American GA-7
- 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
- N887CC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piasecki Heliplex Heliport (PN34), Coatseville, PATo McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS), Knoxville, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 most recent annual inspection was completed about 45 days before the accident. After completion of the annual inspection the airplane was flown to another airport, where it would be the subject of a restoration project and then sold. The airplane then sat outside, and during that period the airport received about 10 inches of precipitation. The purpose of the accident flight was to deliver the airplane to its new owner. According to company and airport employees, the pilot arrived at the departure airport around 1230 and made it clear that he was “in a hurry,” as he had a return flight booked for 1800 that evening. According to witnesses, the airplane was fueled with 80 gallons of 100LL fuel and the pilot performed a very brief and incomplete preflight inspection, which did not include obtaining fuel samples from either of the airplane’s fuel tanks. During takeoff, the airplane’s engine “popped,” which was followed by sputtering and an aggressive turn to the right (consistent with a Vmc roll), before it disappeared behind the trees. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that both fuel tanks were intact and fuel was observed in the tanks. Fuel samples taken from the sump tank, engine-driven fuel pump, and the carburetor bowl on the airplane’s right side all contained water and debris. The examination also revealed that the right fuel cap was missing its gasket, which was required, and should have been detected during the most recent annual inspection.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to water-contaminated fuel, and his subsequent loss of control. Contributing to the accident was an inadequate annual maintenance inspection, during which maintenance personnel failed to detect and replace the missing right fuel cap gasket.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24FA103
- Event ID
- 20240201193736
- Case number
- ERA24FA103
- 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: 60e817e35c033460bd50eb87d0640fb0d839b33a97eaaa5c161d53fee63170fd; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:10:48.255Z.