SEA97LA052 · Piper PA-28RT-201 PA-28RT-20
Piper PA-28RT-201 PA-28RT-20 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Chehalis Centralia Airport (CLS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA052
- 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-28RT-201 PA-28RT-20
- 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
- N344LC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chehalis Centralia Airport (CLS), WATo not recorded
- 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)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The first pilot (PIC) and his father, the second pilot, shared the duties of a preflight inspection on the airplane in preparation to perform some touch-and-go landings. The second pilot visually checked both fuel tanks and noted that the left tank was low. He stated that he had mentioned this to the first pilot, and the first pilot did not 'carefully note.' The first pilot selected the left tank for the flight because the left fuel quantity gauge was erroneously indicating a full tank. During the third touch-and-go takeoff, the engine was starved of fuel and suddenly lost all power about 300 feet above the ground. The second pilot, who was also a CFI, immediately took the controls, banked the airplane to the right to avoid trees, and force landed the airplane into an open corn field. The right wing struck the ground during the landing and the airplane nosed over. No preimpact mechanical deficiencies were found with the engine. An examination of the left cockpit fuel quantity gauge revealed that the needle was captured between a deformed face plate and a sticky substance found beneath the glass. The source of the deformation and substance could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the first pilot to conduct an adequate preflight inspection, and his failure to properly manage the aircraft fuel supply. This led to fuel starvation and a subsequent loss of engine power. Factors contributing to the accident are the false indication of the left cockpit fuel quantity gage due to the presence of a foreign substance and a deformed face plate, and unsuitable terrain available for a successful forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA052
- Event ID
- 20001208X07365
- Case number
- SEA97LA052
- 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: 4d023817c7b9c9eebfc9f08e07caee253f13d1432dc5680cbe05bc2d9cf578ac; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:14:18.104Z.