FTW99LA056 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH) to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA056
- 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-32-260
- 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
- N7724J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH), Spring, TXTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inaccurate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 5 hours 13 minutes into a cross-country flight, the airplane's engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion. During the ensuing forced landing, the airplane touched down on the up-slope of a sand dune. The pilot reported that he 'inspected all 4 fuel tanks following refueling prior to departure.' The pilot further reported that he performed fuel calculations at about 3 hours into the flight using fuel gauge readings, and 'fuel usage [was] estimated at 12 gph.' The operator reported that the airplane's normal fuel consumption was 15 to 18 gallons per hour, and that the airplane's average fuel consumption for its previous two flights was calculated to be 16.27 gallons per hour. The airplane's four fuel tanks held a total of 84 gallons, of which 80 gallons were useable.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to correctly calculate fuel consumption, 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 FTW99LA056
- Event ID
- 20001211X11567
- Case number
- FTW99LA056
- 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: 3ee4d215f58722b01184fe988765883918091ed52afa81e2e015a984dd4ea596; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:37:47.291Z.