NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
PA28 Flight Instructor reported fuel exhaustion resulted in a forced landing in a field without damage or injuries.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
Took off from ZZZ with full fuel (48 gallons usable) and made an uneventful flight to ZZZ1. Before departing ZZZ1, checked the fuel level and estimated 30 usable gallons on board based on the previous flight's fuel burn and visual inspection of the fuel tanks. Departed ZZZ1 uneventfully to return to ZZZ and experienced an engine failure 5 miles northeast of ZZZ immediately upon switching fuel tanks. Instructor took control and attempted to troubleshoot, including switching back to the previous working tank to no avail, and subsequently executed a forced landing in a dirt field. No injuries or aircraft damage occurred. Visual inspection of the fuel tanks revealed no fuel remaining in the tanks. Total hobbs elapsed was X.X since receiving a top off (50 gallons) at the original departure airport. Instructor suspects a fuel leak since reaching fuel exhaustion after X hours would have required a fuel burn of approximately 16 gal/hr when the normal planned burn for the aircraft type is only 10 gal/hr. Maintenance findings thus far have been inconclusive.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Aircraft Equipment Problem
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Aircraft · Human Factors · Procedure
- Primary Problem
- Aircraft
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.