FTW98LA138 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Destin Executive Airport (DTS) to Monroe Regional Airport (MLU)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA138
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N7998W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Destin Executive Airport (DTS), Destin, FLTo Monroe Regional Airport (MLU)
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a cross-country flight of 4 hours and 24 minutes, the airplane was 8 nautical miles from its destination when the engine lost power. The pilot initially set up for a forced landing on a highway; however, due to traffic on the highway, he elected to land adjacent to the highway. During the landing, the airplane encountered a ditch, impacted a tree, and came to a stop. When the flight was 13 nautical miles from its destination, the pilot had asked air traffic control to check on the availability of fuel at an airport the airplane was passing over. The controller was unable to confirm the availability of fuel, and although the right fuel gage was 'indicating nearly empty,' the pilot decided to continue the flight. He stated that he 'thought' the airplane would be able to reach the destination without difficulty since he had exhausted the fuel in the left tank earlier in the flight and noted that the 'fuel gage registered empty for 20 minutes or so before the engine quit.' There was no leakage or spillage of fuel at the accident site, and the right tank was found to be empty.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to continue the flight after noting the low fuel quantity indication, which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA138
- Event ID
- 20001211X09553
- Case number
- FTW98LA138
- 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: fa26e0d4ee674fe67de4f111cc1b303ce9908dc251081c2e939a57dce743d71c; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:55:31.774Z.