ATL95FA162 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Walker Family Farm Airport (OK14) to Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL95FA162
- 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
- 2 · 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N15866
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walker Family Farm Airport (OK14), Goldsby, OKTo Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, AL
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inaccurate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane on a downwind leg for landing. They believed that the airplane then turned right onto a base leg. During the turn, one engine quit, the airplane rolled, and the nose dropped to a near vertical attitude. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane impacted in the same attitude. There was no evidence of fuel having been spilled from the left wing tanks. An examination of the right engine indicated there was rotation of the right propeller at impact; also, there was minimal fuel spillage from the right wing tanks. The estimated time en route for the planned flight was 5.4 hours. Investigation revealed that the flight's duration was 4.5 hours, which equated to the calculated fuel endurance of the airplane with its 93 gallon fuel capacity. According to the pilot's logbook, his previous flight in a multiengined airplane was on 8/26/94. The pilot did not report any mechanical difficulty with the aircraft during the flight.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to follow emergency procedures for loss of engine power, and his failure to maintain control of the airplane. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and improper fuel consumption calculations, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, and his lack of recent multiengine flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL95FA162
- Event ID
- 20001207X04146
- Case number
- ATL95FA162
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 73accceebb2cc327eb1d81d6a661a642e212664f6a0b775edb953839df5d58f6; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:39:18.786Z.