CHI02LA114 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA) to Purdue University Airport (LAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA114
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N563PU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA), Fort Wayne, INTo Purdue University Airport (LAF), Lafayette, IN
- 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
- Approach
- 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)
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not followed
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane received sustained substantial damage when it nosed over during a forced landing to a golf course 3 miles north of the destination airport. The student pilot reported she was flying a solo cross-country instructional flight. She departed at 1600 EST and had landed at another airport, but had not refueled. She departed and was en route to the destination airport. The pilot reported she was cleared to land on runway 23 and was number three for landing when the engine lost power. Her altitude was about 1,600 feet MSL and she preformed an emergency landing to a golf course. During the landing rollout, the airplane nosed over. The time of the accident was 1830 EST. The pilot reported, "If I were enabled to fly again, I would remember to switch my fuel tanks (as it says on the check lists). I would not rely on habit but on the lists which are given me for the purpose of not relying on habit." The inspection of the airplane revealed no fuel in the right tank and full fuel in the left tank. The fuel selector was found in the right tank position. The engine run was performed and the engine ran with no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management resulting in the total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and the pilot's failure to use the checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA114
- Event ID
- 20020426X00574
- Case number
- CHI02LA114
- 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: ab24b5bbb08c800632ba82ab8e5fe9d5a373e090582fa3443afc0ac7ff507626; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:59:13.619Z.