NYC96LA048 · Piper PA-23-150
Piper PA-23-150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Dutchess County Airport (POU) to Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (LYH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA048
- 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-23-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N1082P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dutchess County Airport (POU), Poughkeepsie, NYTo Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (LYH), Lynchburg, VA
- 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
- 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 › Exhaustion
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The pilot rented a multiengine airplane to fly 70 hours during a 3 week period. The pilot and passenger departed, flew a 4.4 hour flight, and refueled with 73 gallons of fuel. The pilot then flew 2 legs that totaled 3.5 hours, and refueled the airplane with 68.9 gallons. Two days later the pilot departed on another leg that lasted 2 hours. After a brief stop, and no refueling, the pilot departed on the accident leg. About 1.5 hours after takeoff, during night IMC, the right engine lost power, followed by the left engine. The pilot received radar vectors to an airport during the emergency descent and did not feather either propeller. The airplane descended clear of the clouds and landed in an open field, 6 miles short of the airport. Examination of the wreckage revealed 3 quarts of fuel in the right wing tanks, and 1 quart of fuel in the left wing tanks. No fuel stains were noted on the fuselage, wings, or ground. The capacity of the airplane's main and auxiliary fuel tanks were measured and verified during the investigation. The engines were removed, test run, and ran normally. The fuel burn during the tests were consistent with the manual. Based upon the average fuel consumption of the previous legs, about 39 gallons of fuel were unaccounted for at the accident scene.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power as a result of fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA048
- Event ID
- 20001208X05187
- Case number
- NYC96LA048
- 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: af3708312baf0d2274cbf085e9b7b093d9e0d8dbb1dd14bab9078f6d9c688aec; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:55:02.345Z.