FTW97LA095 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Rockwall Municipal Airport (F46) to Jones Field (F00)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA095
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2493A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rockwall Municipal Airport (F46), Rockwall, TXTo Jones Field (F00), Bonham, TX
- 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 › Became lost/disoriented, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the student pilot and the operator of the airplane, the student was on a solo cross country flight from Rockwall, Texas, to Bonham, Texas, with an intermediate stop in Paris, Texas. During the flight from Rockwall to Paris, the student did not locate his destination airport. After trying to find the airport for approximately 20 minutes, he continued on toward Bonham, which was approximately 37 nautical miles from Paris. The student became disoriented and attempted to contact both Fort Worth and McAlester Flight Service Stations without success. Other pilots in the area heard the student's calls and attempted to help. A pilot, who thought he saw the student's airplane (but might have seen another airplane), informed the student that Bonham was north of his position. The student flew north in search of Bonham, until the airplane ran out of fuel near Boswell, Oklahoma. Subsequently, the airplane was damaged during a forced landing in a rough/uneven field.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper inflight planning and decision, after becoming lost/disoriented, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, before landing in a suitable landing area. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot of another aircraft did not accurately identify the lost airplane before providing directions, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing, once the engine lost power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA095
- Event ID
- 20001208X07298
- Case number
- FTW97LA095
- 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: 81bec3a7f00ea6e27f10869ce524bb7602074f152b3a4a6a244e41491c764c14; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:30:45.373Z.