ATL98LA116 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Grand Strand Airport (CRE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98LA116
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N78583
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Strand Airport (CRE)To not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The day before the accident, the pilot reported an unspecified vibration in the engine during the flight of that day. On the day of the accident, the pilot reported that after the initial takeoff he experienced engine vibrations and was not comfortable about the first banner pickup of the morning. He decided to fly to a holding area to resolve the vibration problem. After about three minutes, the pilot returned and picked up the banner. After flying approximately five hours, the pilot reported what he described as a low frequency vibration in the engine. Moments later, the engine lost power, and the pilot was no longer able to maintain flight. The pilot elected to ditch the airplane. During the examination of the airplane, approximately one ounce of fuel was drained from the fuel line that connects to the left fuel tank. Examination of the fuel system failed to disclose breaches or leaks. The airplane was topped off with 38 gallons of fuel before the pilot departed. The normal fuel consumption for this airplane was approximately eight gallons per hour. The pilot stated that he 'may have run out of fuel.'
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning of fuel required for the flight that resulted in fuel exhaustion and the total loss of engine power. A factor was the pilot continued flight operation with known deficiencies in equipment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98LA116
- Event ID
- 20001211X10771
- Case number
- ATL98LA116
- 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: fccf4644a49c13b671fc50d0ca48096c540bf850bd2c56cf2e93110c123edfb8; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:21:14.750Z.