LAX04LA004 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From San Rafael Airport (CA35) to Lampson Field (1O2)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA004
- 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
- N183DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Rafael Airport (CA35), San Rafael, CATo Lampson Field (1O2), Lakeport, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft collided with the ground short of the runway while attempting a forced landing following a loss of power in the takeoff initial climb. Witnesses reported after the airplane was airborne, the airplane engine started to "sputter" and the airplane turned back towards the airport. As the airplane touched down the wing tip touched the ground and airplane cartwheeled. The pilot said that he aborted his first takeoff after an indication of low fuel pressure. The pilot taxied back and did another run up. He was unable to determine, or duplicate, the fuel pressure abnormality observed during the first takeoff roll and elected to attempt a second takeoff. During the takeoff initial climb the engine started to sputter and lost power. The pilot attempted to turn back towards the runway, but the airplane had insufficient altitude and collided with the ground short of the pavement. The last pilot to fly the accident airplane told investigators that he had refueled the airplane to capacity at a nearby airport located 26 nm northeast of this airport. He stated that when he secured the airplane in his hangar the left fuel tank was 1/3 full, and the right fuel tank was 3/4 full. He said no one had flown the airplane since. During the accident sequence the left wing separated from the fuselage and the outboard 1/3 of the right wing was folded over. The gascolator and left fuel tanks were breeched and no fuel was found. The first responders, including fire and police units, to the accident scene did not see any fuel, nor did they detect the odor of fuel. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector responded to the accident site and examined the wreckage. The inspector was unable to locate any evidence of fuel in the remaining aircraft system components or spillage on the ground. Following recovery from the accident site, a test run of the engine was accomplished while it was still mounted in the airframe. An external fuel source was engineered to deliver fuel directly to the inlet line of the carburetor. The engine was started using the aircraft's own starter switch and engine controls. The engine started and was run up to 1,300 rpm where it was operated for approximately 1 minute, then shut down. Oil pressure during the engine operation was observed to be in the green arc, approximately 60 psi.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA004
- Event ID
- 20031009X01695
- Case number
- LAX04LA004
- 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: f31b600ae6e536382c4b249b513e41f659d572a7c44b9c97bb484f47818271c8; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:22:23.504Z.