LAX00LA067 · Piper PA-28-181
West Valley Flying Club Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA067
- 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
- N4319Y
- Operator
- West Valley Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, improper
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure to return to home base, the pilot filed an IFR flight plan, conducted a preflight, and had the fuel tanks topped off. He flew on the left fuel tank for approximately 1 hour and then switched to the right fuel tank. Upon reaching his destination he noted multiple cloud layers, and requested and received an IFR clearance to his destination airport. About an hour later he switched back to the left fuel tank. He noted a drop to zero in the left fuel gage about 45 minutes later, and switched to the right tank, where he noted that the fuel gage read 5 gallons. He switched back to the left tank and the engine stopped; he switched back to the right tank and the engine restarted. He declared minimum fuel and received information on nearby airports; one 7 miles in his direction of flight, and his destination airport was 11 miles in his direction of flight. He continued the flight to the destination airport in order to lose altitude. He was at 4,000 feet, and traffic pattern altitude is 800 feet. He requested a straight in to a runway 30 even though 12 was the active runway. On short final, he initiated a go-around due to high speed, and high altitude. During the turn back to the runway the engine lost power and landed in a marshy area. There was no fuel observed in the tanks during the recovery of the airplane. During the engine examination it was noted that were was no fuel staining observed on the wings or fuselage of the airplane, and there were no leaks in the fuel system. No discrepancies were noted with the run-up.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to properly calculate fuel consumption rate, and his improper in-flight planning to continue the flight to the destination airport instead of landing at a closer alternate airport. A factor was the pilot's inadequate aircraft control during the descent, which necessitated a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA067
- Event ID
- 20001212X20274
- Case number
- LAX00LA067
- 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: cc031fdf1c039b6e706701a38b03b34d85efb4c7e90ff8707471c722be7d0cf5; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:35:10.595Z.