MIA02LA025 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Anderson Regional Airport (AND) to Augusta Regional At Bush Field (AGS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA025
- 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-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N6688P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anderson Regional Airport (AND), Anderson, SCTo Augusta Regional At Bush Field (AGS), Agusta, GA
- 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
- 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 › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that about 40 minutes into the flight, at an altitude of about 3,000 feet, all of a sudden, and without warning, the engine ceased operating. He said he performed the emergency procedures, but was unable to get the engine operating again, and he affected a forced landing at the edge of a wooded area. A witness stated that he was in a parking lot, and he saw the airplane, and heard it "cutting on and off", and "waving" back and forth, before it crashed. A detective with the Columbia County Sheriff's Office stated that the pilot told him that he ran out of fuel and tried to land in an open field, but ended up crashing on the bank of a private pond. According to the FAA inspector who responded to the accident scene, the accident airplane's right wing had been destroyed, along with its associated fuel tank as a result of the impact, but the left wing had remained intact. The inspector further stated that the fuel tank in the left wing was found to be nearly full of fuel, and examination of fuel lines from the gascolator to the fuel pump, and from the fuel pump to the carburetor did not reveal any evidence of fuel. The NTSB conducted an operational test of the engine at Atlanta Air Salvage, Griffin, Georgia, and it functioned, exhibiting no evidence of preaccident failure or malfunction. In addition, a detailed examination and test of the airplane's carburetor revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management and failure switch to the other fuel tank which had fuel available prior to the engine ceasing to operate, which resulted in fuel starvation and damage to the airplane during an off-airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA025
- Event ID
- 20011203X02331
- Case number
- MIA02LA025
- 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, coordinates. 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: 0b104286e586b99dbe5906225d710f18ca534557f5397eb194ce33e2875d997e; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:43:40.641Z.