CHI94LA004 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Mackinac County Airport (83D) to Y15 · MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI94LA004
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N5695U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mackinac County Airport (83D), ST IGNANCE, MITo Y15 · MI
- 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; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT MADE A CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT WITH APRROXIMATLY 21 TO 27 GALLONS OF FUEL ONBOARD TO A DESTINATION, WHICH HAD NO REFUELING FACILITY. HE INTENDED TO STOP FOR FUEL ON THE RETURN FLIGHT ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, BUT WAS INFORMED THAT THE AIRPORT, WHERE HE INTENDED TO STOP, WAS GOING TO BE CLOSED. KNOWING THIS, HE FLEW TO THE REFUELING AIRPORT ON THAT SAME DAY. AFTER ARRIVAL, HE WAS INFORMED THAT THERE WAS NO 80/87 OCTANE FUEL AT THAT AIRPORT, BUT THAT FUEL COULD BE OBTAINED AT A THIRD AIRPORT, WHICH WAS ABOUT 10 MINUTES AWAY. DURING FLIGHT TO THE THIRD AIRPORT, A LOSS OF ENGINE POWER OCCURRED. A FORCED LANDING WAS MADE IN A WOODED AREA, AND THE AIRPLANE WAS EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED. A POST-ACCIDENT INSPECTION REVEALED NO FUEL IN THE FUEL TANKS.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PLANNING/PREPARATION BY THE PILOT, WHICH RESULTED IN FUEL EXHAUSTION DUE TO AND INADEQUATE SUPPLY OF FUEL. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE LACK OF SUITABLE TERRAIN FOR A FORCED LANDING, AND TREES IN THE EMERGENCY LANDING AREA.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI94LA004
- Event ID
- 20001211X13529
- Case number
- CHI94LA004
- 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: eba47c84b2ddfa740e4a7012d7d25b86866437ebccccaf331e5820db889179e1; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:47:32.629Z.