MIA99FA031 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Evansville Regional Airport (EVV) to Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99FA031
- 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
- N44240
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Evansville Regional Airport (EVV), Evansville, INTo Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA)
- 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 · descent
- 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 › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot did not obtain a preflight weather briefing or determine the true airspeed for the 593 statute mile 2 leg cross country flight; he assumed indicated airspeed was the ground speed. The flight departed on the first leg with fuel tanks slightly less than full and arrived uneventfully 3.5 hours later. Fuel was not purchased and the flight departed on the second leg. While near the destination airport, the engine quit due to fuel exhaustion. At that time the fuel gauges each indicated approximately 2-3 gallons remaining. While descending for the forced landing, the airplane collided with trees then the ground. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of fuel leakage in flight. Approximately 4 ounces of fuel were drained from the carburetor and from the gascolator. Fuel lines in the engine compartment were empty. Approximately 1/2 ounce of fuel was drained from the right wing fuel tank. No engine failure or malfunction noted. The pilot further stated that during the entire flight time, the mixture control was in the full rich position. Fuel consumption calculations performed for the flight by FAA personnel revealed 47.79 gallons of fuel used out of a total of 48 gallons of usable fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which led to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99FA031
- Event ID
- 20001211X11472
- Case number
- MIA99FA031
- 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: f944a7a2285f3169406f19b33e16486dfab3b1afd44a9985086355c57c7a63e0; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:39:32.148Z.