CHI96LA096 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Fulton County Airport (RCR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA096
- 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-22-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N6939B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton County Airport (RCR), Rochester, INTo not recorded
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 7 minutes after reaching cruise altitude, the pilot switched from the right to left fuel tank. He said the engine ran for about 7 more minutes and stopped. He said when he switched back to the original fuel tank, the engine power surged and then stopped. The pilot said his attempt to restart the engine was unsuccessful. The airplane was landed in a muddy field on its main landing gear, and it nosed over shortly after touchdown. The main landing gear tires were caked with mud. The tailwheel had no mud on it. An on-scene investigation revealed engine control continuity. About 7 gallons of fuel were found in the left fuel tank, and about 1 quart was found in the right fuel tank. The fuel tank cap gaskets were not damaged. Traces of dirty water were found in the carburetor float bowl and fuel strainer. The ignition system was tested, and it met the manufacturer's operating specifications. The FAA's Flight Training Handbook stated that a soft field landing in a tailwheel airplane should be done with the tailwheel touching down with or just before the main landing gear tires.
Probable cause
Water contamination in the fuel, and an inadequate preflight by the pilot. Factors relating to the accident were: soft terrain in the emergency landing area, and an improper soft field landing procedure used by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA096
- Event ID
- 20001208X05231
- Case number
- CHI96LA096
- 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: c65468ca4d2bbd1940652db617f86b34516551a105561e1a690a857ff6c1deb4; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:47:55.458Z.