IAD97LA029 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Carroll County-Tolson Airport (TSO) to 1G1
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA029
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N4911P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carroll County-Tolson Airport (TSO), Carrollton, OHTo 1G1
- 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 · VFR pattern base
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had departed Elyria with 12 to 13 gallons of fuel in each of the outboard tanks and 25 gallons in each of the inboard tanks. He did not refuel at Carrollton prior to the return flight to Elyria. Upon his arrival back at the original airport, the pilot entered the traffic pattern and noticed the manifold pressure on the left engine was higher than on the right engine. He stated that he was distracted by sun glare and executed a go-around. After extending out from the departure end of the runway, the pilot executed 180-degree turn to land on the runway in the opposite direction. The left engine began to run rough as the pilot aligned the airplane for landing. The pilot reported that the airplane's airspeed dropped below Vmc as he looked for the runway. The pilot could not remember anything else prior to impacting the terrain. Examination of the wreckage revealed the following fuel quantities: left inboard - no visible fuel, left outboard - 1 inch of fuel on stick placed in tank, right inboard - 2 inches below full, and right outboard - 1 inch below full. The pilot reported that he had remained on the inboard tanks during the entire trip.
Probable cause
The pilot's fuel mismanagement which led to fuel starvation to one engine, and the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA029
- Event ID
- 20001208X07175
- Case number
- IAD97LA029
- 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: 81445886d305c6c0c8c9b2ad63247a7cdfdddca388c6d8ac2039df69237cecaf; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:16:45.254Z.