ERA24LA359 · Champion 7ECA
Champion 7ECA · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From New Market Airport (8W2) to New York Stewart International Airport (SWF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA359
- 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
Champion 7ECA
- Aircraft type
- Champion 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
- N9580S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Market Airport (8W2), New Market, VATo New York Stewart International Airport (SWF), Newburgh, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1965)
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- 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 was transporting the airplane from during a multi-leg trip and was on the second to last day of the trip. Prior to departure, he purchased fuel from a self-service pump and topped off both wing fuel tanks and checked that each fuel cap was properly secured. He calculated he had enough fuel for the 3.5 hour flight, plus a 40 to 50 minutes reserve, and departed. About 3 hrs. and 16 minutes into the flight, the engine lost total power. The pilot attempted to reach a nearby airport but made a forced landing about a mile short of the runway in trees, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane’s right wing and tail section. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the left wing fuel cap was missing, and fuel streaks were observed aft of the cap toward the trailing edge of the wing. The left wing fuel tank was intact and empty of fuel. The right wing fuel cap was secure, and the tank was absent of fuel. The pilot stated that he did not have any issues with the fuel cap properly securing prior to the accident flight. The left fuel cap was never located. Based on available information, it is likely that the cap was not properly installed, and that it separated from the airplane at some point during the flight. Fuel was subsequently siphoned from the tank(s), and as a result, the engine lost power sooner than the pilot calculated due to fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly secure the left wing fuel cap, 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 ERA24LA359
- Event ID
- 20240829195013
- Case number
- ERA24LA359
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: cf1ee29dd61587876259b64461218a8a4c24f578df3baf2e040cfe17749d52b8; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:12:39.034Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. City slot takes the airport's marketing name; SWF (New York Stewart International) is at Newburgh, NY, about 60 miles from New York City.