MIA98LA046 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK) to Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA046
- 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-28-151
- 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
- N9514K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Chesapeake, VATo Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE)
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, poor
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed and was uneventful until about 20 miles from the destination airport when the engine lost power. The engine was restarted and the pilot was advised of two alternate landing airports, but the pilot continued toward the planned destination. The engine quit several more times, once while directly overhead an airport. Unable to land at the destination airport, while descending for a forced landing, the airplane collided with a tree. About 3/4 to 1 cup and 1 cup of fuel were drained from the left and right fuel tanks respectively. The airplane was over gross at takeoff, but within weight and balance at the time of the accident. An open circuit of the left fuel tank transmitter was noted, but no determination was made as to the reason. The estimated time en route per the flight plan was 2 hours 5 minutes, but calculated post accident to be 3 hours 48 minutes. The actual time takeoff-to-landing was 3 hours 34 minutes. Based on the postaccident calculations, the total fuel consumption for the flight was about 37 gallons, with the flight departing with an estimated 38 gallons.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning, and his poor in-flight decision making.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA046
- Event ID
- 20001208X09348
- Case number
- MIA98LA046
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-12-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e015f8e994f4c76c3fb1a9606006aa7a7e31598297085e1f2576936629461125; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:08:11.587Z.