ANC01LA083 · Piper PA-32-300
Poe Air Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Shungnak Airport (PAGH) to Bethel Airport (PABE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA083
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N43551
- Operator
- Poe Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shungnak Airport (PAGH), Quinhagak, AKTo Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AK
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, fuel control › Malfunction
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot was on a VFR cross-country positioning flight to his home airport. As the airplane was in cruise flight about 500 feet above the ground, the engine surged about three to four times. The pilot activated the electric fuel boost pump, and switched fuel tanks, even though each fuel tank contained adequate fuel. The engine quit, and the pilot selected an emergency landing area in soft, marshy terrain. The airplane received damage to the nose gear, the engine firewall, the left landing gear, the right landing gear, and the right wing. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the engine had accrued about 500 hours since an overhaul. Each fuel tank contained fuel. The electric fuel pump produced pressure. Opening of the throttle produced only a momentary increase in fuel pressure. After several attempts, the engine started and ran at an idle. The engine maintenance records indicated the engine driven fuel pump had been replaced twice since the overhaul. Each fuel pump installed on the engine by the operator since the engine overhaul was tested for proper operation. Each produced fuel pressure. The engine fuel servo was removed and tested for proper operation. During fuel flow testing, the fuel servo produced a lean fuel mixture at a mid-range power setting. The servo, bearing the overhaul facilities coil loc lead seal, was disassembled after the flow check. The examination revealed the brass idle plug/main metering valve had part number 2541461 stamped on opposite sides of the vertical surface of the valve. One of the part numbers had been obliterated by a marking tool, and the number 2537665 etched on the valve with a hand marking tool. Part number 2537665 is the correct component for the model of servo. The valve appeared to a hand modified 2541461 which has a different metering jet placement than that of the correct 2537665 valve. The hand modification was produced by several punch tool indentations around the edges of the jet hole on both sides of the valve body. The indentations had hanging burrs protruding into the jet hole.
Probable cause
A malfunction of the engine fuel control due to an improper overhaul by other maintenance personnel, and subsequent loss of engine power during cruise flight. A factor in the accident was unsuitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA083
- Event ID
- 20010712X01408
- Case number
- ANC01LA083
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-06-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 287e57d67a516a9d981dcc214afe7bd72d5b9f1969a7b8f44404ccd23756f492; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:51:21.019Z.