ANC96LA088 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Skagway Airport (SGY) to Gustavus Airport (GST)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA088
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8956N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skagway Airport (SGY), Skagway, AKTo Gustavus Airport (GST), AK
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fuel system, pump › Pressure too low
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was in cruise flight at 5,000 feet with the fuel selector positioned on the left main fuel tank that contained about 12 gallons of fuel. The pilot intended to deplete the fuel in the left main and then switch tanks. He noted a slight loss of fuel pressure and proceeded to switch the fuel selector to the right main tank that contained about 10 gallons. He also turned the electric fuel pump to the 'on' position. The fuel pressure went to zero and the engine quit. The pilot then selected the right auxiliary fuel tank but he could not restart the engine. During an emergency landing in a river bed, the right wing struck a small bank and the airplane received damage to the nose gear, propeller, right main landing gear, and the right wing. An examination of the engine revealed that upon activation of the electric fuel pump, it produced fuel to the engine driven pump. Hand rotation of the engine did not produce any fuel flow from the engine driven fuel pump. Further examination of the engine driven fuel pump on a test bench revealed that it did not meet the minimum fuel pressure as prescribed by the manufacturer and was very hard to prime.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to low fuel pressure from the engine driven fuel pump and subsequent fuel starvation. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA088
- Event ID
- 20001208X05893
- Case number
- ANC96LA088
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-06-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4dfe43fa682e8211faf491eb6716a7840dcb7a23f0bc08a41cb9165d5f8b4c97; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:14:07.144Z.