WPR26LA191 · Bigham Jack L MARQUART M 5 CHARGER
Cassill Aircraft Leasing Bigham Jack L MARQUART M 5 CHARGER · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Stellar Airpark (P19) to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA191
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
- Not recorded
Bigham Jack L MARQUART M 5 CHARGER
- Aircraft type
- Bigham Jack MARQUART M 5 CHARGER
- 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
- N987JB
- Operator
- Cassill Aircraft Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZTo Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZ
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On May 15, 2026, about 1500 mountain standard time, an experimental amateur built Marquart M5 Charger was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Tucson, Arizona. The pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal fight. The pilot reported that prior to departing, he checked the fuel quantity indicator and observed about 14 gallons of fuel. He estimated that it would provide one hour of useable fuel. The pilot departed and noticed a “heavy smell of rubber” and no smoke. The rubber smell then went away. The pilot reported that while he was about 1,000 ft above ground level the engine lost all power. The propeller continued to spin and he switched the electric fuel pump on. The pilot elected to land on a road where he performed a wheel landing; however, a vehicle was in front of the airplane so the pilot elected to turn away from the road and the vehicle, which resulted in the airplane impacting a pole. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings. After exiting the airplane, the pilot reported that he saw a stream of fuel coming from behind the engine that lasted for about 15 seconds. The airplane was recovered to the pilot’s private hangar for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA191
- Event ID
- 20260518203004
- Case number
- WPR26LA191
- 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. 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: 95f55b994d06348876ff4d388ad670466b7a7c1933e3e8f334a608e322783aa8; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:30:06.198Z.