MIA02LA159 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Selfs Airport (MMS) to Hernando Village Airpark (H75)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA159
- 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
- N120S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Selfs Airport (MMS), Marks, MSTo Hernando Village Airpark (H75), Hernando, MS
- 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 › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, continued
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 said that he had trouble getting the engine started before departing on his flight, and that even though the engine was warm he had to prime it about five times to get it started. He said that while in cruise flight at 3,000 feet, all of a sudden the engine ceased operating. He said the airspeed decreased and the propeller kept wind milling, so he verified that he had been operating the airplane obtaining fuel from the right fuel tank, turned on the boost pump, primed the engine, and it started operating again. About 4 or 5 gallons of fuel was in the left tank, but more fuel was in the right tank, and he was about half way between the departure and destination points so he said he decided to continue to his destination. He said he flew for about 20 minutes and while descending to 1,700 feet the engine ceased operating again. He said he attempted to restart it again, but was unsuccessful so he executed a forced landing to a cotton field. During the landing the right wing and right main gear were damaged. The FAA inspector who responded to the accident stated that the pilot told him that during the last annual inspection conducted in March 2002, the fuel filter was found to be partially blocked, and again in July 2002 the fuel filter drain had to be cleaned because the drain hose was also found to be blocked. Postaccident examinations of the airplane were performed by an FAA inspector and a FAA licensed mechanic, and the examinations revealed 16 gallons of fuel in the right tank, and 5 gallons of fuel in the left tank. In addition, debris was found in the fuel boost pump screen and in the carburetor.
Probable cause
The pilot's operation of the airplane with known deficiencies ( contaminated fuel system) which resulted in fuel starvation, a forced landing to a cotton field, and damage to the airplane during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA159
- Event ID
- 20020906X01534
- Case number
- MIA02LA159
- 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: d0929a627728dbd88ee34f4d947c5b19ec86de767a1574a1944dd4d4ce00a5aa; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:24:05.560Z.