CHI95LA236 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Joseph Y Resnick Airport (N89) to Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA236
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N999JS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Joseph Y Resnick Airport (N89), Ellenville, NYTo Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN), Madison, WI
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion; Wire, transmission; Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AS THE AIRPLANE NEARED ITS DESTINATION THE PILOT SWITCHED FROM THE RIGHT TO LEFT FUEL TANK. ABOUT FIVE MINUTES AFTER SWITCHING FUEL TANKS THE AIRPLANE'S ENGINE EXPERIENCED A TOTAL LOSS OF POWER. DURING ITS FORCED LANDING APPROACH THE AIRPLANE STRUCK ELECTRIC POWERLINES AND THEN COLLIDED WITH THE GROUND. THE ON-SCENE EXAMINATION OF THE AIRPLANE REVEALED NO FUEL IN ANY OF ITS FUEL TANKS. ABOUT 1/2 OUNCE OF FUEL WAS FOUND IN THE FUEL SUMP. NO FUEL WAS FOUND IN THE CARBURETOR. EXAMINATION OF THE MAIN FUEL TANK BLADDERS REVEALED THE OUTBOARD, TOP, SECTION OF THE LEFT BLADDER WAS FOLDED OVER AND COLLAPSED. THE FUEL GAUGES DID NOT WORK ACCORDING TO THE PILOT. THE FUEL GAUGE SENDING UNITS ARE LOCATED NEXT TO THE WING ROOT. RESEARCH SHOWED THE FUEL SENDING UNITS WOULD READ THE LEFT FUEL TANK VOLUME LEVEL, BASED UPON FUEL LEVEL, NOT ACTUAL QUANITY.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion resulting from the improper fuel bladder installation by maintenance personnel. Factors associated with this accident were the collapsed fuel bladder that eliminated about 30 percent of the available fuel in the left tank that the pilot had been relying upon for the flight and operating the airplane with a known equipment deficiency: fuel tank quanity indicators.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA236
- Event ID
- 20001207X03908
- Case number
- CHI95LA236
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-07-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: da457ebf37fbc76dd510aef5eacb8caa301cae9d45fb912debc48dbe78426ac1; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:10:53.075Z.