NYC87FA249 · Piper PA-28-180
Newair Flight Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Biddeford Municipal Airport (B19) to Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC87FA249
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N15917
- Operator
- Newair Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Biddeford Municipal Airport (B19), BIDDERFORD, METo Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN), New Haven, CT
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inaccurate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, poor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PIPER PA-28-180 EXPERIENCED A POWER LOSS DUE TO FUEL EXHAUSTION WHILE FLYING OVER THE LONG ISLAND SOUND. THE PILOT WAS UNABLE TO REACH SHORE PRIOR TO DITCHING. THE DITCHING WAS SUCCESSFUL AND BOTH OCCUPANTS EXITED THE AIRCRAFT WITHOUT INJURIES. AFTER BEING IN THE WATER FOR A WHILE. THEY VOLUNTARILY SEPARATED AND ONE WAS EVENTUALLY PICKED UP AFTER BEING IN THE WATER 3 HOURS. THE OTHER OCCUPANT DROWNED AND WAS FOUND SEVERAL DAYS LATER. THE AIRCRAFT SANK AND WAS NOT RECOVERED. THE PILOT FAILED TO COMMUNICATE HIS SITUATION IN A TIMELY MANNER AND EVEN AFTER TELLING ATC THAT HE WAS LOW ON FUEL ACCEPTED A DESCENT WHICH REDUCED HIS GLIDING DISTANCE. IN ADDITION THERE WAS NO FLOTATION EQUIPMENT ON THE AIRCRAFT. THE PILOT SAID HE HAD PLANNED THE FLIGHT WITH A FUEL BURN OF 8-9 GPH. THE ACFT OWNER, WHO HAD PURCHASED THE ACFT 2 YRS PRIOR, STATED THAT HE ALWAYS FLT-PLANNED FOR 13 GPH WHEN FLYING CROSS-COUNTRY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC87FA249
- Event ID
- 20001213X32179
- Case number
- NYC87FA249
- 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: 5853feb0d91c04f2495a281771a85db39368a7f6784d6c6279689700d3aac045; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:59:13.115Z.