ERA25LA010 · Ditsler Paul A DAKOTA HAWK
Ditsler Paul A DAKOTA HAWK · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Lumpkin County Wimpys Airport (9A0) to Tom B. David Field (CZL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA010
- 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
Ditsler Paul A DAKOTA HAWK
- Aircraft type
- Ditsler Paul DAKOTA HAWK
- 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
- N357PC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lumpkin County Wimpys Airport (9A0), Dahlonega, GATo Tom B. David Field (CZL), Calhoun, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2019)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a cross-country flight, about 12 miles from of his destination the pilot stated that the engine lost all power “due to fuel exhaustion.” The pilot conducted a forced landing to a field, during which the landing gear collapsed due to the airplane’s “excessive vertical speed.” The airplane’s wings and fuselage were substantially damaged. The pilot further stated that he failed to check the airplane’s fuel levels prior to or during the flight. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, fuel planning, and improper fuel management during flight, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and a subsequent off-airport hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA010
- Event ID
- 20241015195307
- Case number
- ERA25LA010
- 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: 2729585f54e472d3d54e95d1c1835c67925e4649145473b239fee504f88004df; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:22:33.649Z.