Salmon Air Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lemhi County Airport (SMN) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA100
- 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
- Visual 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
- N3528Y
- Operator
- Salmon Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lemhi County Airport (SMN), Salmon, IDTo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, ID
- 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
- 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise configuration, the low fuel pressure lights illuminated and the left engine began to surge. The pilot selected cross-feed and the engine functioned normally . Three to four minutes after selecting cross-feed, the left engine began to surge again. With the right engine still operating, the pilot secured the left engine and executed a forced landing in an open field. During the landing roll, the aircraft collided with a ditch and the nose gear collapsed, causing substantial damage to the aircraft's fuselage. An FAA inspector inspected the aircraft after the accident and reported that there was no evidence of fuel in the aircraft's fuel tanks. He also stated the fuel system was not breached and there was no evidence of a preexisting fuel leak. In a written statement, the pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the aircraft at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion because the pilot failed to refuel the airplane. A ditch in the landing area was a contributing factor in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA100
- Event ID
- 20001212X19362
- Case number
- SEA99LA100
- 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: d7b467213ba49bad25a84f7973c31f9d30d8433e76dec04557faa1112047303b; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:55:25.316Z.