Eagle Aero Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Trenton Mercer Airport (TTN) to Richmond International Airport (RIC)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO92LA033
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N27613
- Operator
- Eagle Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Trenton Mercer Airport (TTN), Trenton, NJTo Richmond International Airport (RIC), Richmond, VA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, drain › Open
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRLINE TRANSPORT PILOT WAS DIVERTING TO HIS NEW DESTINATION WHEN BOTH ENGINES LOST POWER. A GEAR UP LANDING WAS MADE IN A FIELD 3 MILES NE OF THE AIRPORT. WHILE EN ROUTE THE PILOT OBSERVED THERE WAS AN EXCESSIVE FUEL CONSUMPTION FROM THE LEFT TANK, SO HE RECALCULATED THE FUEL HE HAD REMAINING ON BOARD WHICH HE DETERMINED TO BE TWO HOURS. HE PROCEEDED TO HIS DESTINATION AS IT WAS ONLY 50 MINUTES AWAY FROM HIS PRESENT POSITION. EXAMINATION OF THE AIRCRAFT AND THE FUEL SYSTEM BY THE FAA REVEALED THE CROSSFEED FUEL LINE DRAIN VALVE WAS OPEN. THERE WERE NO OTHER ABNORMALITIES FOUND IN THE SYSTEM.
Probable cause
ENGINE FAILURE DUE TO FUEL EXHAUSTION BECAUSE OF AN OPEN CROSSFEED FUEL LINE DRAIN VALVE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO92LA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X14238
- Case number
- BFO92LA033
- 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: 5756f5abea38791eea5270b5f865df5310bb14768d9c9b09db3c2d511bbf1ff5; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:47:50.882Z.