MIA97LA098 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From W44 · Asheboro, NC to Dickson County Municipal Airport (M02)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA098
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N2505Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W44 · Asheboro, NCTo Dickson County Municipal Airport (M02), Dickson, TN
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After about 3 hours of flight, the pilot contemplated stopping for fuel, but elected to continue. The flight was about 7 nautical miles west of an airport, when the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot initiated a turn to land at the nearby airport, but was unable. While descending for a forced landing, the right wing collided with a tree. The airplane then descended and came to rest upright in a field. The pilot stated that at the time of the loss of engine power, the left fuel gauge indicated empty and the right fuel gauge indicated 1/8. Examination of the airplane by an FAA airworthiness inspector revealed the fuel tanks were intact and empty.
Probable cause
improper planning/decision by the pilot, by failing to ensure there was sufficient fuel to reach a suitable landing area, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, loss of engine power, a forced landing, and collision with a tree. The faulty fuel indication was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA098
- Event ID
- 20001208X07597
- Case number
- MIA97LA098
- 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: cc4fa0c59941c648ad2845036ffc7781edaeae9824285be123fac1250d0a0fb2; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:13:18.881Z.