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Atlas / NTSB / ATL84MA296

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ATL84MA296

1984-09-24 ATLANTA, Georgia, United States Airport · ATL Serious 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

THE NORMAL FUEL LOAD FOR THE FLT WAS 1500 LBS, BUT WITH A FORECAST TAIL WIND & AN ESTIMATED FLT TIME FOR ONLY 1+10, THE CREW ACCEPTED THE LOWER INDCTD (950 LB) FUEL LOAD. THE FLT WAS UNEVENTFUL UNTIL AN INDCTN OF 250 LBS PER SIDE, THEN THE FUEL 'SEEMED TO DISSIPATE FASTER.' WITH AN INDCTN OF 150 LBS ON DWNWND, THE COPLT RCMDD DECLARING AN EMERGENCY. THE CAPT'S RESPONSE WAS TO ASK ATC FOR THE ANTICIPATED LENGTH OF THE DWNWND LEG. HE WAS TOLD 20 MI. PRIORITY HNDLG WAS REQUESTED, BUT WAS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR A DECLARED EMERGENCY. THE APCH WAS CONTD WITH NORMAL HNDLG FOR APRX 10 MIN. AT 1608:39, THE CREW DECLARED AN EMERGENCY, THEN RPRTD THE ACFT WAS OUT OF FUEL. IT CRASH LANDED ON ROUGH TERRAIN, SHORT OF RWY 8. AN EXAM REVEALED FUEL SENSORS HAD BEEN IMPROPERLY INSTALLED (INTERCHANGED BTN THE INBRD & OUTBRD TANKS). THUS THE GAGES INDCTD ABOUT 180 LBS MORE THAN THE APRX 763 LBS THAT WAS ACTUALLY ABOARD AT TKOF. A SPCL 500 HR INSPN OF THE ENTIRE FUEL SYS WAS MADE ON 7/8/84 USING THE 'WET' METHOD, BUT ONLY THE CAPACITANCE METHOD CHECKS EACH INDIVIDUAL SENSOR Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1984_ATL84MA296.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

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