FTW96LA323 · Piper PA-25-235
Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From L O Simenstad Municipal Airport (OEO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA323
- 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-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N7469Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L O Simenstad Municipal Airport (OEO)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane took off from runway 26 on the fifth glider tow of the day. While climbing through 400 feet AGL, the engine lost power and the pilot executed a forced landing to a pasture. During touchdown, the airplane crossed a dirt road and the left main gear collapsed. The pilot stated that he performed a detailed preflight of the airplane prior to the first tow of the day, and found that the aircraft was serviced with 20 gallons of fuel. He further stated that 20 gallons is normally sufficient for 6 or 7 tows, but on the day of the accident the tows were 'exceptionally long due to the general subsidence of the air mass along with high density altitude.' Examination of the fuel system revealed that both fuel cells were empty.
Probable cause
loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to refuel. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain available for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA323
- Event ID
- 20001208X06242
- Case number
- FTW96LA323
- 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: 1ad50ce4976c3b0ac708bbd1bbf3c172c0a1aacde0d1ffd8b3163227f126ab8f; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:44:19.572Z.