MIA99LA170 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA170
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N983DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FLTo not recorded
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At an altitude of between 1,500 and 3,000 feet the airplane's engine lost complete power. The pilot attempted to land in a field, and struck the ground with the right wing. The wing separated, the airplane cartwheeled, and came to rest right side up. Several pilots heard the pilot on the Auburn UNICOM frequency, say that he was in distress, that he was experiencing engine trouble, and thought he might be out of fuel. Examination of the airplane's fuel tanks revealed about 8 ounces of fuel in the left wing, no fuel in the right fuel tank, and there were no signs of spilled fuel in the accident area. The Hobbs meter reading was 12.4 hours when the airplane was last fueled. The Hobbs meter reading after the accident was 16.2 hours, for a total of 3.8 hours total Hobbs time since the last refueling. The usable fuel for this airplane was 48 gallons. The calculated burn-rate for this flight was 12.63 gallons of fuel per hour. A burn rate of 12.63 gallons per hour, times 3.8 hours, equals 47.99 gallons of fuel used. Examination of the carburetor fuel screen revealed that it was clean and free of debris.
Probable cause
The pilot' failure to refuel the airplane prior to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA170
- Event ID
- 20001212X19061
- Case number
- MIA99LA170
- 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: 9bff3e90d5e4b03935b4ced19642221287a056d18717872109689bc03656cf0e; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:56:06.156Z.