DFW05LA026 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Pecan Plantation Airport (0TX1) to North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA026
- 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
- N7706P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pecan Plantation Airport (0TX1), Granbury, TXTo North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI), 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
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 4,500-hour pilot reported that he during takeoff initial climb, the airplane experienced a loss of engine power at at an altitude of approximately 200 feet above ground level. The pilot immediately initiated a forced landing to a field, while verifying the fuel pump was on and the mixture was rich. The pilot stated that he "thought the left fuel tank was full" of fuel prior to departure. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed there was no visible fuel was found in the left main fuel tank, but fuel was observed in the right main fuel tank, left and right auxiliary fuel tanks. During the recovery process, the recovery crew drained approximately four tablespoons of fuel from the left wing.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing factors were the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05LA026
- Event ID
- 20041202X01903
- Case number
- DFW05LA026
- 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: 986af79b05ea1b151333a8d66b57f1e95ec3dc75b8287b4a7a965f70767a91db; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:10:31.688Z.