SEA02LA151 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Eugene Airport (EUG) to Cottage Grove State Airport (61S)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA151
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N32138
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eugene Airport (EUG), Eugene, ORTo Cottage Grove State Airport (61S), Cottage Grove, OR
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Starvation
- 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 private pilot reported that while in a cruise flight configuration the airplane's engine backfired and quit. The pilot reported that he pushed the propeller control and mixture control to the full-forward position, engaged the electric fuel pump and attempted a restart. He reported that the engine successfully started, however, after initiating a climb the engine again lost power and he initiated a forced landing to a nearby field. The pilot reported that while on approach to the field, the airplane collided with a willow tree and the airplane landed short of his intended landing area. Post-accident examination revealed that the fuel selector was found in the left tank position. Further examination indicated that the left fuel tank was empty. The pilot reported that the purpose of the flight was to reposition the airplane from Eugene to Cottage Grove for refueling.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper management of fuel, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA151
- Event ID
- 20020820X01439
- Case number
- SEA02LA151
- 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: 92eb92019fa5d10647dbf8b5fcb9f99dea8fbd152851e2d1485cd309c34aed4a; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:36:11.712Z.