MIA96LA141 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB) to Tallahassee International Airport (TLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA141
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N9239B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB), Vero Beach, FLTo Tallahassee International Airport (TLH), FL
- 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
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After about 2 hours of flight time, the pilot was descending from about 1500' to about 1200' to remain in VFR conditions, when the engine lost power. Attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful, and he was forced to land in a wooded area, where the airplane was damaged. The pilot reported that he had positioned the fuel selector to the right tank before flight and had not repositioned it until the loss of power occurred. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left wing fuel tank was nearly full and that the right wing fuel tank contained less than 6 ounces of fuel. Also, the fuel line to the carburetor was dry, and the gascolator was drained and found to contain only 10 cc's of fuel. No fuel leakage was noted from the right wing fuel tank.
Probable cause
the pilot's mismanagement of fuel, by failing to reposition the fuel selector to the left tank after fuel was used from the right tank, which resulted in fuel starvation, loss of engine power, and a forced landing. A factor relating to the accident was: the lack of suitable terrain for an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA141
- Event ID
- 20001208X05833
- Case number
- MIA96LA141
- 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: 7f154e8ce40bbcdac4e38867c82aa1858acf82f66310154601d1565b92ff8cca; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:29:36.751Z.