FTW99LA154 · Piper PA-30B
Piper PA-30B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Mc Alester Regional Airport (MLC) to OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA154
- 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-30B
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7991Y
- Operator
- Freddie W. Chambers · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mc Alester Regional Airport (MLC)To OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), Oklahoma City, OK
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the airplane's left engine experienced a loss of power followed soon thereafter by a partial loss of power of the right engine. The pilot was unable to maintain altitude and made a forced landing in a field. The pilot added that he 'had to climb over power lines [and] stalled [the] aircraft.' The pilot stated that he had refueled the airplane with 90 gallons of fuel prior to his departure. He added that he had visually checked the fuel level prior to the departure; however, he did not sump the fuel tanks. Fuel samples that were taken from the airplane's left and right main fuel tanks contained a fluid on the bottom of each sample, which resembled water. A fuel sample taken from the refueling truck revealed no evidence of water contamination.
Probable cause
The pilot inadvertently stalling the airplane while attempting to avoid power lines. Factors were the loss of power on both the left and right engines as a result of water contamination in the fuel system, the pilot's inadequate preflight procedures, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA154
- Event ID
- 20001212X18785
- Case number
- FTW99LA154
- 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: 65897c74df59f7bcc7e6b3fee1844fa30e8f0634003ff0269196e370288a46b7; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:03:19.350Z.