ATL96FA090 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Witham Field (SUA) to Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96FA090
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-180
- 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
- N8818J
- Operator
- Richard W. Candahl · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Witham Field (SUA), Stuart, FLTo Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU)
- 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 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lawrenceville, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot filed and activated an IFR flight plan. After about 3.2 hours of flight, while descending for a landing approach, the engine lost power. During a subsequent forced landing, the airplane hit an embankment and was damaged. Examination of the airplane revealed two gallons of fuel in the right wing. The left wing fuel line was separated at the wing root with no evidence of fuel spillage at the accident site, and the fuel selector was found in the left wing fuel tank position. The mixture was found in the rich position, the magneto switch was on 'both,' and the flaps were found retracted. The engine manual indicated that at 2,400 rpm, full throttle, and mixture rich, the engine would consume 15 gallons per hour. With that rate of fuel consumption, the engine would have consumed 48 gallons of fuel during the 3.2 hour flight. The airplane's usable fuel capacity was 48 gallons.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel consumption calculations that resulted in fuel exhaustion. A factor was the pilot's failure to follow the emergency procedure for a forced landing, in that the flaps were not extended.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96FA090
- Event ID
- 20001208X05900
- Case number
- ATL96FA090
- 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: 75e8ccfc86bffb04b70275bd68302c3f6086f91e03e6da58014d7cef8647992e; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:20:41.809Z.