CHI02LA048 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Crystal Airport (MIC) to O'Neill Municipal Airport–John L Baker Field (ONL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA048
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2492K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crystal Airport (MIC), Minneapolis, MNTo O'Neill Municipal Airport–John L Baker Field (ONL), O NEILL, NE
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during a forced landing on a narrow road following a loss of engine power. The pilot was attempting to land on a gravel road when the airplane went into a ditch. The pilot said that the engine began running rough and he switched tanks. He said that switching tanks, "...resulted in further trouble with engine performance." He said that he selected a road to land on and was landing to the south. He said that the landing was hard and the left main wheel, "...caught the edge of the roadside resulting in the plane being pulled down into the left ditch and over onto its nose." A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed only unusable fuel within the tanks. No other anomalies were found with respect to the airplane or its systems that could be associated with a pre-impact condition.
Probable cause
The inadequate preflight planning by the pilot resulting in the exhaustion of the fuel supply, and the pilot not maintaining directional control during the forced landing. A factor was the unsuitable landing area selected by the pilot, and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA048
- Event ID
- 20011227X02445
- Case number
- CHI02LA048
- 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: 48ee866b6352f242d283c627b7248eb3393217ff63d42c62bb474b66e26d26ca; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:16:33.253Z.