CHI00LA064 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Chippewa County International Airport (CIU) to Gratiot Community Airport (AMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA064
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N4276E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chippewa County International Airport (CIU), SAULT STE MARIE, MITo Gratiot Community Airport (AMN)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane engine lost power and the pilot executed a forced landing. The pilot stated that he had flown the aircraft on the previous day and did not refuel the aircraft prior to the accident flight. The pilot estimated the round trip distance to be about 425 miles, the cruise speed to be 100 miles per hour, and the aircraft fuel consumption to be 7.5 to 8.5 gallons per hour. According to the written statement, 'In calculating his [the pilot's] fuel consumption he [the pilot] determined that he [the pilot] would not have had enough fuel.' The pilot said that he executed the forced landing in a snow-covered field and the airplane nosed over after striking a fence line. He also said that he 'did not plan total fuel for flight and pre flight warm up.' On scene examination of the aircraft revealed no preexisting anomalies with respect to the aircraft, it's engine or systems. No fuel was found in the line from the fuel pump to the carburetor. No fuel was found in any of the fuel tanks and no fuel stains were found on the ground surrounding the aircraft.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate fuel consumption calculation. Factors were the rough terrain, the fence and the exhaustion of the fuel supply.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA064
- Event ID
- 20001212X20454
- Case number
- CHI00LA064
- 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: 41eb548e64adcfa0a2fbb6b52f85df6986c3c1c1a781cfbad6a679c636d4d5c6; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:18:44.906Z.