Fuel exhaustion 172 lands on road

WannFly

WannFly

Final Approach
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Not sure if this was posted before

Painful was watch a so called PIC , taking off with min fuel I am guessing , then asking ATC things like will I glide to that airport? Which direction on the road should I put her down?

Jeez.
 
It's amazing how quickly some pilots will defer their ADM to ATC who typically are not pilots.

I did like how after the pilot had declared fuel exhaustion that the controller asked how much fuel was remaining.
 
I wonder if he thought he'd fueled it, or someone else had, and didn't check until he was in the air. Oops.

What typically happens next with something like this? $$ out the door to trailer your plane home of course. Traffic citation? FAA action of some sort?
 
I remember a previous discussion here of this incident: pilot’s first flight in newly purchased aircraft, was flying from Norfolk Virginia to his home in TN, somewhere he proffered “faulty fuel gauge “. Flight Aware time in air made one think of poor fuel planning.
 
wrbix said:
I remember a previous discussion here of this incident: pilot’s first flight in newly purchased aircraft, was flying from Norfolk Virginia to his home in TN, somewhere he proffered “faulty fuel gauge “. Flight Aware time in air made one think of poor fuel planning.
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That I as on a long XC, while that’s not an excuse headwind might have played a role and the pilots decision to push on instead of landing. I don’t know all the details of this one, but if it wasn’t a leak, he didn’t have much fuel at all when he took off. Which means let along looking at the gauges which are incorrect at best, he didn’t even visually check the fuel. Wonder if he did any preflight at all and then surrendered his PIC responsibilities to ATC. It’s a miracle that FAA doesn’t enforce any certificate actions against such idiots. Running out of fuel right after take off is solely on the pilot.
 
Advantage low wings, look in the tanks every time before you fly.
 
SkyDog58 said:
It's amazing how quickly some pilots will defer their ADM to ATC who typically are not pilots.
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It's called CRM. Really really really poor CRM in this particular instance but CRM nonetheless. :)
 
WannFly said:
That I as on a long XC, while that’s not an excuse headwind might have played a role and the pilots decision to push on instead of landing. I don’t know all the details of this one, but if it wasn’t a leak, he didn’t have much fuel at all when he took off. Which means let along looking at the gauges which are incorrect at best, he didn’t even visually check the fuel. Wonder if he did any preflight at all and then surrendered his PIC responsibilities to ATC. It’s a miracle that FAA doesn’t enforce any certificate actions against such idiots. Running out of fuel right after take off is solely on the pilot.
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A misinterpretation of data, I think...he did not take off from KVJI, but originated in Norfolk.
The Flight Aware is a bit misleading in that the flight is divided in two...one ending and one originating at KVJI but time lapse between the two was only three minutes, and second portion less than a minute...the original thread here discussed a single flight from Norfolk.
Still poor fuel planning, and poor ADM in that he apparently overflew KVJI with critically low fuel only to do a 180 to return in that direction when engine convinced him what the fuel gauges couldn’t
 
SkyDog58 said:
It's amazing how quickly some pilots will defer their ADM to ATC who typically are not pilots.

I did like how after the pilot had declared fuel exhaustion that the controller asked how much fuel was remaining.
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Meh on both accounts.

That was a wind request, not that the controller would be able to provide that for his location. The controller could have provided winds for the nearest airport.

The fuel remaining probably was for emergency response and is a normal request. It could have been used by the pilot to ensure his fuel selector wasn’t on an empty tank.

The controller almost said “frequency change approved”, or it sounded like he was about to, before losing contact. I think that may have been a relatively new controller or one who may not have experienced an abnormal situation like that before.

Finally, the video mentioned the pilot experienced fuel problems on departure climb? Is that correct? This may have been contamination, selector on an empty tank or something else? Not defending the pilot just some possibilities.
 
wrbix said:
A misinterpretation of data, I think...he did not take off from KVJI, but originated in Norfolk.
The Flight Aware is a bit misleading in that the flight is divided in two...one ending and one originating at KVJI but time lapse between the two was only three minutes, and second portion less than a minute...the original thread here discussed a single flight from Norfolk.
Still poor fuel planning, and poor ADM in that he apparently overflew KVJI with critically low fuel only to do a 180 to return in that direction when engine convinced him what the fuel gauges couldn’t
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I thought the video mentioned he experienced trouble on departure climb out. I might have misinterpreted or misheard that.
 
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