FTW00LA202 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR) to West Houston Airport (IWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA202
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N9407W
- Operator
- Harold E. Armstrong · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR)To West Houston Airport (IWS), Houston, TX
- 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 · climb to 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 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 › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After departure, the airplane was climbing through 1,500 feet, when the engine 'spooled down.' The pilot stated that he pushed the engine controls forward and turned on the auxiliary fuel pump; however, he did not detect a change in engine power. The pilot elected to make a forced landing in a field approximately 2 miles from the departure airport. During the landing roll, the left main landing gear impacted an ant hill and separated. The FAA inspector found the fuel selector in the off position. He added that he found the left auxiliary fuel tank 'completely empty,' the left and right main fuel tanks full, and the right auxiliary fuel tank containing 3.5 gallons of fuel. The airplane was taken to an aircraft maintenance facility where mechanics test ran the engine on the airplane. The mechanics reported that the engine would not start and run with the left auxiliary fuel tank selected; however, the engine started and ran for approximately 15 minutes on each of the remaining fuel tanks. The FAA inspector stated that the pilot indicated that he thought he had taken off with the left main fuel tank selected.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel tank selection, which resulted in fuel starvation. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA202
- Event ID
- 20001212X21241
- Case number
- FTW00LA202
- 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: 5b240f4508ef9e2046b6de1d85813adb34cacd9e6f3abcd3d0d94a6739d56299; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:49:42.743Z.