FTW97LA090 · Piper PA-28-151
Southwind Aviation Academy Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Waco Regional Airport (ACT) to Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA090
- 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-28-151
- 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
- N8478F
- Operator
- Southwind Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waco Regional Airport (ACT), Waco, TXTo Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO)
- 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 final
- 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
During the landing approach, the airplane was about 1 mile from the runway threshold at an altitude of 500 feet AGL when the engine lost power. Total flight time was 4 hours and 18 minutes. The chief flight instructor found that the fuel tanks were intact with no fuel in the tanks or the gascolator. The assistant director of maintenance inspected the engine and the fuel system and found no discrepancies. The operator reported that the student was unable to produce any flight planning or fuel planning for the return flight. An ATC controller stated that the pilot had terminated flight following prior to maneuvering for approximately 15 minutes before proceeding to the destination airport. En route winds aloft were 150 degrees at 14 knots. The operator conducted a test flight in the make and model of airplane along the flight route with a headwind of 3 knots and the fuel used was 38.4 gallons (total usable fuel 46 gallons). The operator stated that 13 knot headwinds and 15 minutes of flight maneuvering would have deplete the remaining fuel.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to refuel the airplane which led to fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power. Factors were the pilot's lack of preflight planning and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA090
- Event ID
- 20001208X07294
- Case number
- FTW97LA090
- 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 1997-01-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8643a895fdf79b52def5d1590195f8847dc5696659e0936b45056aede2338bb4; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:25:26.988Z.