FTW03LA230 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Pacer Field (5OK4) to Pauls Valley Municipal Airport (PVJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA230
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N3336M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pacer Field (5OK4), Pacer Field Air, OKTo Pauls Valley Municipal Airport (PVJ), Pauls Valley Mu, OK
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 4,000-hour pilot reported that he climbed to approximately 2,500 feet, and the engine lost power. He then selected an open field and maneuvered to clear power lines. After landing in the field, the airplane impacted a pipe fence which bordered the field adjacent a highway. Subsequently, the airplane flipped over and came to rest on the west bound lane of the highway. According to entries in the flight log, the airplane was fueled to capacity (38 gallons) at 21.3 Hobbs meter time. Another 5 gallons of fuel was added at 24.5 Hobbs, and at the time of the accident the Hobbs read 26.0. According to the Lycoming Model O-320 engine Operator's Manual, at 2,450 RPM the fuel burn is 10.0 gph. Based on recorded Hobbs times, the airplane was operated about 4.7 hours from the re-fuelings to the accident. At a 10gph burn, the airplane would have used about 47 gallons of fuel in 4.7 hours of operating time. Flight log entries showed 38 gal at 21.3 Hobbs and 5 gal at 24.5 Hobbs, which equals 42 gals.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to refuel. Factors were the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA230
- Event ID
- 20031003X01654
- Case number
- FTW03LA230
- 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: f0f626a11e7bd722170f56ca89bd18f4f1e468e745048d02d7bc7985ff0c2cfd; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:21:50.221Z.