FLYING Magazine
Pilots who run out of fuel short of their destinations are rarely charged with a violation of the FAA’s fuel requirement regulation for flight in VFR conditions.
FAR 91.151 reads: (a) No person may begin a flight in an airplane under VFR conditions unless (considering wind and forecast weather conditions) there is enough fuel to fly to the first point of intended landing and, assuming normal cruising speed—(1) During the day, to fly after that for at least 30 minutes; or (2) At night, to fly after that for at least 45 minutes.
Although it sounds curious, running out of fuel (while usually stupid) before completing a cross-country flight isn’t a violation if the aviator can demonstrate that, in planning the flight, they used accurate mileage, accurate fuel consumption figures from the aircraft manual, and applicable winds aloft forecasts. But unexpected adverse winds or a sightseeing diversion like checking out an attractive and tempting bridge, getting lost or deviating around weather, and consequently running short of fuel prior to the destination doesn’t mean they’ve violated the rule.
One of the earliest fuel accidents I remember involved a couple of women who were flying a single-engine Aero Commander from somewhere in the East in an air race—maybe the Powder Puff Derby. They ended up stuffing it in a field near Wilmington in rural Clinton County, Ohio, with bone dry fuel tanks. Something went wrong, they said, because they had used figures from the aircraft
manual…well, sort of.
Manufacturers love to impress owners with an airplane’s range in miles at cruise power settings. But you can’t count on flying that advertised 700 miles nonstop unless you remember that those charts were the result of a test
pilot flying a brand-new, perfectly tuned airplane. You have to compute the numbers for each flight—climb, altitude, power settings (is the tachometer accurate because most aren’t) actual winds aloft, and ground speed to accurately estimate time en route plus 30 minutes during the day (45 at night). And, boy, is that ever a minimum.
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Another sadder out-of-fuel accident involved a single-engine Piper whose owner had flown three friends to an annual weekend at a beach in the Carolinas. With a tailwind, they arrived nonstop but postponed the return flight, wanting to spend more time on the beach. This meant they’d be flying back over the mountains at night with a headwind.
As they approached the Clinton County airport, the tanks ran dry and the out-of-currency pilot put the Piper in a field a couple miles from the runway. It flipped over, and all four occupants hung upside down overnight in the cockpit. Only one survived. A farmer driving to work the next morning saw the wrecked airplane in a field. The curious thing was, a year before, this pilot had made the same flight and landed with power at the home airport but had to be towed off the runway because of fuel exhaustion.
In another instance, a young newly licensed man left Cincinnati in a Cessna 152 and picked up his father in Dayton, Ohio, for a fishing trip in Michigan. A couple days later, he reversed course, dropped off his father at night and, despite a suggestion that he buy some fuel, opted to continue on to Lunken Field (KLUK). He crashed next to a restaurant on about a 3-mile final to the runway.
In the investigation, I spoke to an FBO employee at the airport in Michigan where they had landed. She didn’t know yet about the accident but was quite voluble about the careless young pilot who had landed with nearly empty tanks: “That young man would never rent one of our airplanes.”
Similarly, but sadder, was a young doctor who rented a Cessna 152 at the old Blue Ash Airport on the north side of Cincinnati. He was a member of an Indiana Air National Guard squadron that was conducting an event and lunch at the Terre Haute, Indiana, airport (KHUF). The pilot flew to Terre Haute that Sunday morning and spent the day—offering multiple rides to his friends—and starting back to Cincinnati near sunset that evening. The tanks on a 152 hold only 22.5 gallons, but he added no fuel to the airplane for the return trip. The engine quit in darkness, and he elected to land on a divided highway just a few miles short of the airport.
No one will ever know why he landed against traffic on the unlit highway, but he collided head-on with an SUV being driven home by two nurses from the nearby Bethesda North Hospital. When I arrived, the nose of the Cessna was embedded in the back end of the automobile, and there were no survivors.
Like everybody, I shook my head and wondered at the lack of planning and just plain foolishness of this apparently intelligent and well-educated pilot. Why did he begin the flight home without first refueling at Terre Haute—especially knowing he’d consumed more fuel in the rides he gave and would be arriving after dark? He asked too much of the airplane and took his own life as well as those of two innocent women on the highway. Hard to understand and, after mourning for the unnecessary loss of life, you just shake your head at the
stupidity.
Recently, I opened my first pilot logbook and found the entry for my required “long” (350-mile) solo cross-country flight in the Ercoupe in April 1962. I can’t remember much about preflight planning, if any, except the lines I drew on the sectional charts and checking weather. I remember little, if any, oversight by my instructor before I launched. He probably checked the weather and looked at my charts.
The fuel capacity of an Ercoupe is about the same as a Cessna 150/152 (22.5 gallons) but the Cessna, at about 105 mph, outruns the Ercoupe by about 15 mph. My route was from KLUK to Richmond, Indiana (KRID), to Terre Haute, to Monroe County Airport in Bloomington, Indiana (KBMG), and back to Cincinnati Lunken. I wandered around a little but logged about 3.5 hours.
My instructor was there when I landed, probably relieved, and asked where I’d bought fuel. I said I didn’t need to buy any fuel and told him to look at that little wire on the header tank. It was still kind of bobbing, so there was obviously plenty of fuel left.
I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I recall it wasn’t very pretty.
This column first appeared in the May Issue 970 of the FLYING print edition.