FTW97LA080 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Brooksville–Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV) to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA080
- 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-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
- N33037
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brooksville–Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV), Brooksville, FLTo Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR), Baton Rouge, 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
- 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)
- 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 pilot departed on an IFR flight plan with a fuel endurance of 5 hours and 24 minutes and with an estimated time en route of 4 hours and 23 minutes. The airplane ran out of fuel after 5 hours and 26 minutes of flight. The pilot reported to ATC that the airplane ran out of fuel 10 miles east of his destination. ATC provided a vector direct to the airport; however, the airplane was not able to reach the airport and landed on a four-lane road approximately 4 miles southeast of the airport. The airplane contacted a power line prior to touching down on the highway. The pilot stated that during the landing roll, the right main landing gear was torn off after impacting the median curb and the right wing sustained structural damage after impacting a residential mail box. Examination of the airplane's fuel system revealed that the fuel selector was in the left tank position and the right wing tank was found empty; however, the tank was compromised. The left wing fuel cell contained 1 cup of fuel.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's failure to refuel. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA080
- Event ID
- 20001208X07285
- Case number
- FTW97LA080
- 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: 3305c2f8e16913b250da812f41d0cbd9e2ab8ae161b99f389ecebe4d590a8510; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:31:20.921Z.