SEA00LA185 · Rowe PIETENPOL
Rowe PIETENPOL · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From 2S9 to Astoria Regional Airport (AST)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA185
- 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
Rowe PIETENPOL
- Aircraft type
- Rowe PIETENPOL
- 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
- N5079R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2S9To Astoria Regional Airport (AST), Astoria, OR
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who did not use a checklist, placed the fuel valve in the 'OFF' position while hand-propping his aircraft. After the engine started, he climbed into the back cockpit, but forgot to reposition the fuel valve, which was located in the front cockpit, to the 'ON' position. During the climb-out after takeoff, the engine quit from fuel starvation, but the pilot was unable to reach the valve in order to reposition it during flight. He therefore turned back to the airport in order to execute an engine-out landing. As the aircraft was crossing the runway threshold, the pilot allowed the airspeed to drop below power-off stall speed (Vso), and the aircraft stalled/mushed into the runway surface.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an airspeed above power-off stall speed (Vso) while attempting a forced landing after a total loss of engine power, and his failure to move the fuel selector switch to the 'ON' position prior to takeoff. Factors include the pilot's failure to use a checklist, fuel starvation, and an inadequate fuel valve location.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA185
- Event ID
- 20001212X22078
- Case number
- SEA00LA185
- 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: b97999dac5f02878319982ac6c6921d6d315141e0c1416a5f7235cf6dc2d5334; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:25:01.295Z.