Cessna 152 N49100

Summary

On 14 August 1999 at about 02:14 local time, a Cessna 152 registered N49100 was involved in an accident near Buckeye, Arizona, United States. 2 people were on board and nobody was injured. The aircraft was destroyed. The NTSB has published a probable cause for this accident; it is quoted in full below.

Date

14 August 1999 at 02:14

Classification

Accident

Location

Buckeye, Arizona, United States

Coordinates

33.3801, -112.5497

Aircraft

Cessna 152

Registration

N49100

Category

Airplane

Engines

1

Operator

Not recorded

Operating rule

Part 91: General Aviation

Purpose of flight

Personal

Phase of flight

Not recorded

Route

Lake Havasu Cit → Glendale

Aircraft damage

Destroyed

Weather

VMC

Light

Day

NTSB number

LAX99LA269

Nobody was injured.

fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inaccurate fuel consumption calculations used in flight planning.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record. This site does not paraphrase or interpret it.

Read the full NTSB narrative

While inbound to his destination, the pilot reported that the engine began to miss. It resumed running a couple of times but finally stopped altogether. The pilot made a forced landing on a dirt road, damaging the aircraft. The aircraft was last serviced with 20.8 gallons of aviation fuel on the previous day. The pilot computed the fuel requirement for the flight by using the fuel consumption chart in the pilot operator's handbook. After a flight of 0.2 hours on the day before, the pilot estimated that he had 3 hours 55 minutes of fuel remaining (without reserve) for his cross-country flight. At the time the engine quit, the Hobbs meter showed that a total of 3 hours 36 minutes had elapsed. The average fuel consumption for the fuel load was 6.8 gallons per hour. The fuel capacity of the aircraft is 26 gallons with 1.5 gallons unusable. When asked about his planning, he acknowledged that his planning estimate of 6 gallons per hour had not considered the additional fuel requirements for his initial takeoff and climb, nor the seven other landings and takeoffs that he subsequently made since his last refueling. According to the POH performance charts, start, taxi, and takeoff requires 0.8-gallons of fuel. Aircraft retrieval personnel recovered less than 2 gallons of fuel from both of the main tanks and the fuel system was found to be intact. Safety Board investigators successfully started and ran the engine after the accident.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record.