CHI04LA101 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Henry County Airport (7W5) to New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA101
- 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
- N5844P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henry County Airport (7W5), Napoleon, OHTo New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD), Olathe, KS
- 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
- 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
- Fuel system › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, 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 airplane sustained substantial damage during a forced landing at night after a loss of engine power. The pilot reported that he had flown from IXD to 7W5, a distance of 519 nautical miles, earlier in the day and that the flight had taken 3 hours and 20 minutes to complete. The airplane was topped off with fuel and the fuel receipt indicated that 38.56 gallons were added. The airplane's fuel tanks held 60 gallons total fuel with 54 gallons useable. The pilot reported that he calculated that the airplane used approximately 12 gallons of fuel per hour. The return flight departed at 2020 cdt and the pilot reported that the engine started running rough at 3 hours and 28 minutes into the flight. He switched the fuel boost pump on and switched the fuel selector from the right to left fuel tank. The pilot reported, "At approximately 2 minutes of running on the left tank the engine started running rough and failed." The pilot executed a forced landing to a grassy area adjacent to a well-lighted street. During the landing rollout, the airplane's wing struck a tree branch. The inspection of the fuel tanks revealed the fuel tanks were dry. The passenger reported that the "first tank ran dry roughly 40 miles from our destination…" and "there were two airports only a couple of miles in front of us. I suggested to him that we land and refuel at one of the airports…" The pilot told the passenger there was enough fuel remaining to land at the destination airport. The pilot had a total of 3,605 flight hours with 10 flight hours in make and model. The passenger reported that the GPS indicated that there was a slight right-quartering headwind of 7 - 10 knots, and it showed an average groundspeed of 130 - 135 knots. The airplane impacted the terrain about 0007 cdt, approximately 3.8 hours after departure. The airplane's Owner's Handbook indicated that the fuel consumption at 75% power at 6,000 feet pressure altitude is 14.1 gph.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel calculations and the pilot's improper in-flight decision which resulted in fuel exhaustion. Contributing factors were the trees and the night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA101
- Event ID
- 20040414X00462
- Case number
- CHI04LA101
- 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: 828fd347d9a02d5a2a40c88a20cf825b0ff0588149ab6c40a490c5194349b3cc; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:46:33.025Z.