CHI96FA309 · Piper PA-32-300
Northwest Flyers Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Eagle River Union Airport (EGV) to Schaumburg Regional Airport (06C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA309
- 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
- N823PJ
- Operator
- Northwest Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagle River Union Airport (EGV), Eagle River, WITo Schaumburg Regional Airport (06C), Schaumburg, IL
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fuel system › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight itinerary consisted of a 4.5-hour round-robin flight from Schaumburg, Illinois, to Eagle River, Wisconsin and return. The airplane departed Schaumburg with approximately 84 gallons of fuel, and was not refueled prior to the return flight. The pilot said he had 24 gallons in the main tanks and 4 gallons in each tip tank prior to departing Eagle River. On takeoff, the cabin door was unsecured and a return landing to the Eagle River Airport was executed. On the return flight to Schaumburg, the engine lost power several times. The pilot was able to temporarily restore power by switching between fuel tanks. The pilot decided to land in a street because he could not find a local airport. The airplane contacted parked vehicles and a residence during the landing. Both the pilot and front passenger were not wearing shoulder harnesses. The weather was observed as light to moderate rain with lighting and thunderstorms in the vicinity. Forty six ounces of fuel were drained from the left wing. The engine ran successfully at all power applications with no discrepancies noticed.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate fuel management and which resulted in fuel system exhaustion. The factors involved were the pilot's failure to refuel, inadequate preflight planning/preparation and the dark night conditions encountered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA309
- Event ID
- 20001208X06428
- Case number
- CHI96FA309
- 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 1996-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 29101d92877fa85f1c52de45a4d46787c146ec472aa362155e8fa4c9d164bc15; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:32:49.057Z.