MIA96LA008 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Clearwater Air Park (CLW) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA008
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28R-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3250R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clearwater Air Park (CLW), Clearwater, FLTo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Partial 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 starvation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, delayed
- Pilot in command › Flight to new destination, delayed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Covington, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed with less than full fuel due to weight and balance considerations. En route, the pilot recognized a fuel shortage condition existed while the flight was near an airport with an ILS approach. The flight continued, and the pilot advised that the frequency congestion increased and ATC control was transferred to several sectors. The pilot then declared minimum fuel to the controller after he was advised that the flight was 50 miles from the planned destination. The controller vectored the flight to a nearby airport with an instrument approach, and while descending toward that airport, the engine sputtered momentarily then regained power when the fuel selector was positioned to the opposite tank. The pilot then declared an emergency and the flight was vectored direct toward the airport. After descending below the base of the clouds, the engine again sputtered. The pilot landed the airplane in a field with uneven terrain. It collided with an elevated gravel road, separating the nose gear, and became airborne. The airplane touched down again and the left main landing gear collapsed. Postcrash examination revealed that the fuel selector was positioned to the right fuel tank which was found to contain 3.5 gallons of fuel. The left wing fuel tank was empty.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to divert to an alternate airport after recognizing a low fuel state existed and his delay to declare an emergency with ATC. Contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA008
- Event ID
- 20001207X04756
- Case number
- MIA96LA008
- 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: ce18c304c91db5a352bec59d90cb694a004f2aa9b50a83f9e5cf9a234955a960; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:09:45.477Z.