FTW03LA113 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Key Field / Meridian Regional Airport (MEI) to F39 · Sherman, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA113
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N5264L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Key Field / Meridian Regional Airport (MEI), Meridian, MSTo F39 · Sherman, TX
- 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
- Fuel system, selector/valve › Unapproved
- Unknown › Fuel tank selector position, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was painted at a maintenance facility prior to being delivered to its new owner. A private pilot was contacted by the maintenance facility to ferry the airplane. The 90-hour pilot reported that she flew on the right tank for the first 30 minutes of the flight, changing the fuel selector every hour thereafter. The pilot added that to switch the fuel selector, she had to move her left leg and look at the fuel selector every time she switched tanks since she was unable to feel the detent to make sure the selector was in the proper position. About 10 minutes after leveling-off at 3,000 feet, while 25-nautical miles from her next refueling stop, the pilot reported a rough running engine, followed by a complete loss of engine power. The airplane was too low to make the field and the airplane collided with matured trees just short of the selected field. The engine was removed from the airframe and after installing a test propeller, the engine was successfully ran to 2,400 RPMs. Further examination of the fuel system revealed that the fuel selector placard (Piper P/N 63832) was the correct type for this airplane; however, the pointer (handle) was not the correct type for this model aircraft. The installed pointer(handle) was to be used on later models of the airplane (s/n 28-7105001 and up). The installed pointer (handle) was found to have the fuel valve shaft indexed differently than the correct pointer (Piper P/N 63949) for this model, and the pointer would not properly align with the placard. An unknown installer appeared to have re-drilled the holes in the placard and cocked it about 45 degrees so the pointer would align with the placard and the detents in the valve.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as result of the unapproved fuel selector valve handle installed on the aircraft by an unknown person. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA113
- Event ID
- 20030320X00358
- Case number
- FTW03LA113
- 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: 791bc7d3648059aea2818692b6fbd4eb4989fbdb37871d349e0a2b90eefa33ce; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:30:52.987Z.