MIA97IA016 · Piper PA-31-350
Piper PA-31-350 · Incident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From McComb-Pike County Airport / John E Lewis Field (MCB) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97IA016
- 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
- Incident
- 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-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N120JD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McComb-Pike County Airport / John E Lewis Field (MCB)To Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LA
- 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)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Airport facilities, fuel storage › Inadequate
- Fluid, fuel grade › Incorrect
- Ground personnel › Refueling, improper
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot requested that the aircraft be fueled with 40 gallons of 100LL avgas. The lineman fueled the aircraft with 40 gallons of Jet-A fuel. This made the total fuel on board about 80 gallons (about a 50 percent to 50 percent mixture of avgas and Jet-A). The pilot signed the fuel receipt, which indicated Jet-A fuel, and then departed. The lineman did not observe the pilot perform a preflight inspection. Both engines lost power after takeoff, and a forced landing was made in a field. The aircraft was equipped with restricted fuel ports to prevent this type of misfueling; however, the fuel pump (from which N120JD was fueled) was not equipped with the respective large size nozzle that was designed to prevent the problem.
Probable cause
the lineman's fueling of the aircraft with the wrong type fuel, the pilot's failure to verify the type of fuel added to the aircraft before flight, and failure of the refueling facility to be equipped with the proper fuel nozzle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97IA016
- Event ID
- 20001208X06941
- Case number
- MIA97IA016
- 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: e987b1fba23f84fcf4c6163ede98c1c0445a1d70ac9f03096aa0fa58c123e79d; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:51:42.313Z.