NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ATL97LA081
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's inadequate pre-flight inspection which resulted in fuel exhaustion and total loss of engine power. A factor was the soft terrain at the emergency landing site.
Factual narrative
On June 5, 1997, about 1830 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 172I, N5124G, collapsed the nose landing gear and nosed over during an emergency landing near North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The airplane was operated by the Shell Aviation Services, Inc., under the provisions of Title 14 CFR Part 91, and visual flight rules. A flight plan was not filed for the business flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed. There were no injuries to the commercial pilot, and the airplane was substantially damaged. Origination of the flight was the Horry County Airport, Conway, South Carolina, at an undetermined time, on the same date. According to the FAA inspector who visited the accident site, the pilot reported that the airplane's fuel supply was exhausted, resulting in a loss of engine power, forced landing, and subsequent damage to the airplane. The inspector reported that the pilot stated he did not check the fuel quantity in the airplane prior to beginning the flight. While in cruise flight, the engine quit. A forced landing was made to a soft field resulting in the collapse of the nose landing gear and the airplane nosing over onto its back. The pilot reported that he did not check the fuel quantity in the airplane prior to departing for the flight. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1997_ATL97LA081.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel exhaustion). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- AOPA Air Safety Institute 2023 · Safety advisor
Safety Advisor: Fuel Awareness
AOPA Air Safety Institute safety advisor on preventing fuel-exhaustion and fuel-starvation accidents in general aviation. Covers pre-flight fuel planning, reserve requirements (14 CFR 91.151, 91.167),…
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Abstract
U.S. Civil Rotorcraft Accidents, 1963 through 1997
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recorded 8,436 rotorcraft accidents during the period mid - 1963 through the end of 1997.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Contractor Report (CR)
A study of carburetor/induction system icing in general aviation accidents
An assessment of the frequency and severity of carburetor/induction icing in general-aviation accidents was performed. The available literature and accident data from the National Transportation Safet…
- NASA NTRS 2018 · Other
Parachuting to Safety
NASA's Langley Research Center awarded Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc., three Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts to research and develop a new, low cost, lightweight recovery system …
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗