CHI97LA209 · Piper PA-25-235A
Piper PA-25-235A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Clark County Airport (8D7) to O'Neill Municipal Airport–John L Baker Field (ONL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA209
- 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-25-235A
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N7050Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clark County Airport (8D7), Clark, SDTo O'Neill Municipal Airport–John L Baker Field (ONL), ONEIL, NE
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported the fuel tanks were topped off. The winds were from 160 degrees at 20 gusting to 27 knots. The pilot reported flying at 1,000 feet above ground level. He diverted to the west due to weather. He reported that after two hours of flight, the engine RPM dropped from 2,200 to 2,000, and then to 1,500 RPM. The pilot was maneuvering to land in a field which ran north to south, when the engine RPM dropped to 1,000. He then determined that he could not reach the intended field, so he turned to the southwest for a forced landing. He reported that as he flared during touchdown, a wind gust from the south lifted the left wing, and the right wing struck the ground. The airplane did not have an operable fuel indication system. A visual inspection disclosed a small amount of fuel in the carburetor float chamber and the firewall fuel strainer. There was no evidence of fuel in the fuel tank or lower fuselage cavity. Also, there was no evidence of fuel seepage at the crash site or stains on the fuselage where fuel could have seeped out.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion, due to the pilot's improper planning/decision and inadequate fuel consumption calculations. Factors relating to the accident were: the lack of an operable fuel indication system, and the high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA209
- Event ID
- 20001208X08324
- Case number
- CHI97LA209
- 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: c73b49ce630c24aa1dc5755ac36bca2f8a2eac3f9c275be2615ec9f72a7f8bd8; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:11:42.931Z.