NYC03LA116 · Piper PA32-260
Piper PA32-260 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From HTW · Huntington, WV to Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport (PMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA116
- 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 PA32-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N820CA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From HTW · Huntington, WVTo Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport (PMH), Portsmouth, OH
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, 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 pilot overflew the runway and as he turned downwind, the engine lost power. He switched tanks and turned the boost pump on, but was unable to restore power. He continued on the downwind, and then turned base and final close to the airport. The airplane touched down mid-field on the 2,300 foot long turf runway, at 75 to 80 mph. The pilot was unable to stop the airplane on the runway, and it continued beyond the runway into a gravel pile and scrap metal beyond the departure end of the runway. Examination of the airplane revealed the right wing tank had ruptured with evidence of a fuel spill. Trace amounts of fuel was found in the fuel line leading to the carburetor, and in the carburetor. The left wing tank was intact and contained a little over a gallon. When electrical power was applied, the fuel gage indicated about 1/8, and with the boost pump on, fuel was pumped fuel flowed to the carburetor. No obstructions were found in the fuel lines. The pilot reported that he flew the airplane earlier in the morning. When he preflighted the airplane, both outboard tanks were empty, the right inboard was full, and the left inboard had about 18 gallons. He reported that he flew for about 35 to 40 minutes on the left tank, and then conducted the accident flight on the left tank. He also reported that he did not visually check the fuel tanks prior to departing on the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to position the fuel selector to a tank with adequate fuel for the flight, which resulted in a power loss due to fuel starvation and the subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA116
- Event ID
- 20030602X00753
- Case number
- NYC03LA116
- 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: b4891d2bfb2e6999b78df3d9197f6d513c0e6eb88970197fbbe54047e0843b28; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:28:50.255Z.