BFO89LA080 · Piper PA-28-180
Carolina Air Academy Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK) to Montgomery County Airpark (GAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO89LA080
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N40892
- Operator
- Carolina Air Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK), MT AIRY, NCTo Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MD
- 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 starvation; Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Haymarket, VA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
AFTER NEARLY 3 HRS OF FLT, THE ENG BEGAN RUNNING ROUGH. THE PLT APPLIED CARB HEAT, TURNED ON THE ELECTRIC FUEL PUMP, AND MOVED THE MIXTURE TO RICH, BUT THE ENG LOST ALL POWER. THE PLT ATTEMPTED TO MAKE AN EMERGENCY LANDING IN A PASTURE; HOWEVER, BEFORE REACHING THE PASTURE, THE ACFT CONTACTED TREES & CRASHED. AN EXAM OF THE ACFT REVEALED THE FUEL SELECTOR WAS POSITIONED TO THE LEFT TANK, WHICH CONTAINED APRX 1 PINT OF FUEL. THE RIGHT TANK WAS FULL OF FUEL. DRG A POST-ACDNT TEST RUN, THE ENG OPERATED NORMALLY. THE PLT WAS A FOREIGN NATIONAL FROM MOZAMBIQUE.
Probable cause
IMPROPER USE OF THE FUEL SELECTOR, WHICH RESULTED IN FUEL STARVATION & LOSS OF ENGINE POWER; AND IMPROPER USE OF EMERGENCY PROCEDURES AFTER LOSS OF ENGINE POWER. THE PRESENCE OF HIGH OBSTRUCTIONS (TREES) IN THE APPROACH PATH TO THE EMERGENCY LANDING AREA WAS A FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO89LA080
- Event ID
- 20001213X29308
- Case number
- BFO89LA080
- 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: 1b485ac1111418a06493a1abe615677d6d50f767b447d19527d471576014e7f6; retrieved 2026-09-22T00:02:22.581Z.