LAX96LA170 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to Santa Paula Airport (SZP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA170
- 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
- N6415P
- Operator
- Peter A. Perl · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo Santa Paula Airport (SZP)
- 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 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 › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot planned to fly from Van Nuys to Santa Paula to purchase fuel at a discount. He indicated that upon takeoff a total of 44 gallons of fuel were in the four fuel tanks. According to the pilot, during the flight no mechanical problems were experienced. Approaching Santa Paula, the engine lost all power, and the pilot made a forced landing. The airplane collided with rough terrain within 1 mile of the runway. Recovery personal picked up the airplane and reported finding between 7 and 8 gallons of fuel upon draining the wings from the fuselage belly sump drain. The engine was subsequently test run, and no discrepancies or malfunctions were observed. According to the Piper Aircraft Corp., the nominal 75 percent engine power fuel consumption rate is about 14 gallons per hour.
Probable cause
fuel starvation due to the pilot's failure to monitor fuel tank quantities and to assure that the fuel tank selector was positioned to a tank containing adequate fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA170
- Event ID
- 20001208X05614
- Case number
- LAX96LA170
- 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: 212019e91108eb3119cfaba497d6035da978220b33c7508f23fad91546e0f0c1; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:38:16.490Z.