One way to put it

[Rich]

A friend and former instructor of mine now owns/runs a flying club out of Paine Field (KPAE). A few days ago a pilot of their 150 had a "power problem" that caused him to crash into a ravine just short of 16R. No significant injuries but the plane is wrecked. The cause of the power problem is now determined to be, as my friend put it, "too much air in the fuel tanks"

[mhoran]

I'm always so surprised by these type of accidents. I just don't understand how it happens, at least not on any sort of $100 hamburger flight. Maybe on a long IFR flight where you have to divert and the diversion doesn't work out and you burn through all your extra fuel. But that's just a massive planning failure. For a weekend jaunt, or even a VFR trip, I always leave the ground with at least an hour of extra fuel PAST when I know I'll be on the ground. I guess the people this happens to must treat their plane like a car, get in and realize they don't have enough fuel, but pulling over to the side of the road isn't an option.

I've also never run out of fuel in my car...

[Rich]

This was just an out-and-back flight of 90 minutes, so no excuse, really. In a hurry? I think they use mogas in this plane and others, refueling from cans stashed somewhere. Maybe an interesting story there. I can see this being more of a pain than filling up at the pump.

[dant]

My guess is if all you do is local area flights, I can imagine it gets easy to assume you've got enough fuel all the time and maybe miss verifying tanks were filled one critical time. Especially if you're relying/assuming the last person filled up.

Richard (the club owner in question) relatively recently had cans of gas stolen and had to move the storage site, so maybe it's even more of a pain than we think.