DEN00LA035 · Piper PA-22-160
Piper PA-22-160 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA035
- 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-22-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N9225D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the preflight, the pilot did not visually look into the fuel tanks. He said that he turned the master switch on, and the fuel gauges indicated approximately one half full. During the takeoff roll, he raised the nose wheel quickly to keep the prop out of the dirt. He said that he performed a steeper then normal climb-out, and then turned left continuing the steep climb. He said the engine stopped, and the metal propeller stopped turning. A pilot/mechanic said that if a steep climbing departure turn is performed by a pilot, and the airplane is only partially fueled, unporting of the fuel lines in the wing tanks is possible, resulting in fuel starvation to the engine. No preimpact engine or airframe anomalies, which might have affected the airplane's performance, were identified. Pilot training manuals caution the pilot to visually look into fuel tanks during preflight and not to rely on cockpit fuel gauges.
Probable cause
The pilot's not following preflight procedures, the starvation of fuel to the engine, and the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA035
- Event ID
- 20001212X20233
- Case number
- DEN00LA035
- 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: f7e2497afad9a77c8e5f33c5380df5b412bd13242609e6f3acdce85e1422eedb; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:44:07.823Z.