FTW98LA038 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (GLS) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA038
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N40201
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scholes International At Galveston Airport (GLS)To City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), COLORADO SPRGS, CO
- 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
- Partial 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; Tree(s); Wire, transmission
- 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 › Starvation
- Fuel system, filter › Blocked(partial)
- Maintenance, inspection › Inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, at about 250 to 300 feet AGL, the right engine lost partial power, followed by the left engine. The pilot made a wide left turn toward a small field with trees in front, and retracted the landing gear. During the forced landing, the pilot 'intentionally' hit the trees in order to slow down and go under some power lines. After going under the wires, the airplane came to a stop in the field. The airplane had not been flown for about two years, and the pilot was to ferry the aircraft for the owner from Galveston, TX, to Colorado Springs, CO. A mechanic at the Scholes Field Airport in Galveston prepared the airplane for the flight and obtained a ferry permit from the FAA. The mechanic reported that the fuel tanks were drained and visually inspected. About one gallon of water was drained from the tanks, and both fuel filters were cleaned. The mechanic also reported that rained had fallen on the day before the accident flight. Examination of the fuel filters revealed that they were both clogged with debris.
Probable cause
inadequate maintenance and/or preflight inspection of the airplane, and subsequent blockage of the fuel filters, which led to fuel starvation, partial loss of engine power in both engines, and a forced landing. A related factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA038
- Event ID
- 20001208X09169
- Case number
- FTW98LA038
- 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: 289310f5ed346e12e3792d1e1dd41f27159a4ec9bbac441cd5abebb528331998; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:05:37.311Z.