MIA96FA233 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Air Harbor Airport (W88) to Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96FA233
- 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
- N8803J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Air Harbor Airport (W88), Greensboro, NCTo Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM)
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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; Wire, transmission
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot used 8 gallons per hour fuel consumption for the the planned 4-hour flight, with enough fuel for 5 hours. About midpoint of the flight the flight descended to 6,000 feet from the planned 8,000 feet per the pilots request. Slight vectoring was required during the flight for weather avoidance. The passenger reported that when the flight was near the destination, the pilot observed that the fuel gauges were indicating empty, but after observing the city lights near the destination airport he elected to continue the flight. While being vectored onto final approach for a localizer approach the engine experienced a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. During the forced landing to a highway the airplane collided with unmarked power lines and a vehicle. The right rear seat passenger was ejected from the airplane during the impact sequence. A 2 foot by 2 foot fuel stain on the ground was noted beneath the left wing fuel tank, and 8 ounces of fuel were drained from the right wing fuel tank. Examination of the carburetor revealed worn material on the float needle valve, that the float adjustment was out of limits, and that the economizer jet was improperly adjusted. Examination of the right rear seat cable assembly revealed the swaged fitting was separated and not located. Corrosion and wear was not noted on the cable and the cable strands exhibited evidence of tensile overstress failure. Review of the aircraft logbooks revealed the carburetor was last overhauled in 1967, and was installed in January 1968. The engine was overhauled in 1976, but the carburetor had not been overhauled since 1967. A non-mandatory service bulletin requires carburetor overhaul every 10 years or when the engine is overhauled, whichever occurs first.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's improper in-flight planning/decision for electing to continue the flight after observing that the fuel gauges indicated empty. Contributing to the accident was an improperly adjusted economizer jet and an out of adjustment float. Also contributing to the accident was unsuitable terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96FA233
- Event ID
- 20001208X06784
- Case number
- MIA96FA233
- 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 1996-09-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f233eee060f15ac07693181202d776b499b8d9aed4722f36534b8f0921cfeb60; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:10:57.918Z.