Cirrus Crash in Lexington County Kills Alabama Passenger After Engine Failure

"I Would Get Fuel Upon Departure"

Two nights before the crash, a Cirrus SR22 sat parked at Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina, and its pilot told the fixed-base operator he didn't need anything. No services required. He'd handle fuel himself when he left. According to witnesses, he never actually ordered any.

The flight had started days earlier and a long way from South Carolina. On 3 February 2026, the pilot departed Pryor Field Regional Airport in Decatur, Alabama — his home base — with full tanks, making two stops along the way for additional fuel before landing at Wilmington International Airport in North Carolina for the night. He resumed the next day, flew to Columbia Metropolitan, and parked there for two nights before continuing the trip.

Eight Thousand Feet, Then Nothing

On the morning of 6 February 2026, the Cirrus, N705CD, departed Columbia Metropolitan around 9:00 a.m. with two people aboard, climbing out toward roughly 8,000 feet. At 9:17, the pilot came on the radio to air traffic control: the engine had failed. He needed somewhere to land, and he needed it now.

Controllers worked to get him toward White Plains Airport, a private strip near Gilbert, South Carolina, about 13 miles from where the flight had begun 25 minutes earlier. It wasn't enough distance, or enough altitude, to make it. The aircraft came down roughly 1,800 feet short of the runway, striking trees that tore into both wingtips before the Cirrus tumbled out of control, rolling an estimated 200 feet before coming to rest upside down.

What Was Aboard, and Who Wasn't Left

The passenger, 30-year-old Andrew Frederick Nichols of Huntsville, Alabama, died at the scene. The pilot survived with critical injuries and was taken to hospital. There was no post-crash fire — a small mercy in a crash violent enough to roll the aircraft onto its back — and no one on the ground was hurt, despite the impact happening in a wooded residential arealong Country Lane Road in Gilbert.

An Open Question About Fuel

The NTSB's preliminary report lays out the flight's fueling history in detail: full tanks at departure from Alabama, two refueling stops en route to North Carolina, a landing at Columbia Metropolitan where the pilot declined services and reportedly never ordered fuel for the two nights the aircraft sat there. What the report doesn't yet state is whether that gap — no confirmed fuel added at the final stop before the accident flight — is what actually caused the engine to fail 25 minutes and roughly 13 miles into a planned longer trip back to Alabama.

A total loss of engine power at cruise altitude, with no reported precursor symptoms, is consistent with several possible causes — fuel exhaustion or mismanagement among them, but not the only possibility. The NTSB has not yet issued a probable-cause determination, and the investigation continues to examine the engine, fuel system, and the aircraft's fueling records more closely before reaching a conclusion.

Thirteen Miles From Where It Started

The Trap in "I'll Handle It Myself"

Declining fixed-base-operator fuel services isn't unusual on its own — pilots sometimes prefer a different fuel supplier, or plan to top off at their next stop instead, and there's nothing inherently wrong with managing fuel independently rather than through the airport's line service.

What Twenty-Five Minutes Doesn't Allow

Total engine power loss at cruise altitude gives a pilot altitude to work with, and altitude is time — time to run a restart checklist, time to identify a suitable landing site, time to communicate with controllers and get vectored toward help. It very nearly made it.