FTW96LA266 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From 6F4 · TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA266
- 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-28-151
- 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
- N40954
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 6F4 · TXTo 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Emergency procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, not corrected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Abilene, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying with the fuel selector in the 'Left Tank' position, when the engine lost power. Attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, and the airplane was landed at an abandoned airport. During the landing, the left main gear struck a pile of concrete debris, and subsequently, the left wing separated from the fuselage. Inspection of the airplane revealed that the left fuel tank contained less than 1 gallon of fuel, and the right fuel tank contained approximately 16 gallons of fuel. The fuel line from the left tank to the fuselage had been compromised during the accident; however, there was no evidence of spilled fuel. With the fuel selector in the 'Right Tank' position, the engine was started, and it ran normally.
Probable cause
fuel mismanagement by the pilot, which resulted in fuel starvation; and the pilot's failure to reposition the fuel selector (follow emergency procedure) while attempting to restart the engine. A factor relating to aircraft damage was: concrete debris (rocks) in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA266
- Event ID
- 20001208X05985
- Case number
- FTW96LA266
- 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 1996-06-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 94db32d596b03fc3c97a157356f365a6ba0174592a8e33abaee1b6168633b0fa; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:11:02.820Z.