IAD99LA010 · Piper PA-32-300
Castle Aviation Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) to 29G · Ravenna, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD99LA010
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8619N
- Operator
- Castle Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF), Buffalo, NYTo 29G · Ravenna, OH
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that while on a night flight under instrument flight rules, in visual conditions, he noticed a change in engine performance. After switching fuel tanks and adjusting the power and propeller levers, he turned the airplane toward an airport beacon and continued under partial power. While on final approach, the airplane lost all engine power and a forced landing was performed 1/4 mile short of the landing runway. Three of four fuel tanks were ruptured, but 8 gallons were contained in an auxiliary tip tank. Fuel was not found at the injector, engine driven fuel pump, electric driven fuel pump, or the outlet of the fuel selector valve. The engine and airframe fuel supply components were tested and found to be operational. The spark plugs were removed and the electrodes were white with no trace of gray. The engine started and ran in a test cell after the accident. However, a detailed examination revealed that the engine driven fuel pump leaked and the left magneto was not configured to factory specifications.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel management that resulted in fuel starvation. Factors in the accident were the improperly timed magneto and an engine driven fuel pump leak.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD99LA010
- Event ID
- 20001211X11276
- Case number
- IAD99LA010
- 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: ed803294a76852cec0aa58545661ad2ccfd0e1459cf049bdfd5a88afa8856117; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:40:15.767Z.