FTW98LA359 · Piper PA-28-181
Tomcat Aviation Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Shreveport Regional Airport (SHV) to F54 · Arlington, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA359
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N8770C
- Operator
- Tomcat Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shreveport Regional Airport (SHV), Shreveport, LATo F54 · Arlington, TX
- 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a dark night forced landing to Interstate 20's westbound lanes, the pilot was forced to land on the outside lanes due to a vehicle in the passing lane. During the landing, the right wing of the airplane collided with the guardrail. The pilot had flown the airplane from Arlington, Texas, to Shreveport, Louisiana, the day prior to the accident. The pilot did not refuel the aircraft at Shreveport. On the early morning return flight to Arlington, the pilot got off course and could not reorient himself. Fort Worth FSS in coordination with DFW Approach, provided the pilot with 'radar vectors to Arlington.' While at 2,000 feet msl, over Joe Pool Lake, the engine lost power and the pilot was unable to restart it. The pilot reported to a law enforcement officer 'that he became low on fuel and attempted to make an emergency landing.' Examination of the fuel system by an FAA inspector revealed that it had not been compromised, and there was no usable fuel in either fuel tank. The Hobbs meter showed 4.1 hours since the pilot rented the aircraft.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's failure to refuel which resulted in the loss of engine power. Factors were the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing, and the dark night light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA359
- Event ID
- 20001211X10852
- Case number
- FTW98LA359
- 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: 11669939361080f753ba4186608e215302721147df464d691b7b7861dc1f3f49; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:08:53.060Z.