CHI05CA041 · Piper PA-30
Husker Aircraft Repair Piper PA-30 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ) to Millard Airport (MLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05CA041
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7803Y
- Operator
- Husker Aircraft Repair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IATo Millard Airport (MLE), Omaha, NE
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Planned approach, low
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The rental/instructional airplane received substantial damage on impact with terrain during a forced landing. Dark night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. Inspection of the airplane revealed that the fuel selector(s) were positioned to the main fuel tanks and that the right auxiliary fuel tank contained an estimated 5-10 gallons of fuel. All remaining fuel tanks did not contain any usable fuel. The pilot stated that at the time of total engine power loss, it was decided to enter a left downwind for runway 12 since a straight-in approach to runway 30 at that time would leave "us a little high." The airplane impacted terrain while on final for runway 12. The operator stated that he mentioned to both pilots that there was no fuel in the auxiliary tanks and if the main fuel tanks were full, there was only 3 hours of fuel on board. He stated that both pilots used the accident airplane in their training towards their multiengine land airplane certificates and that they knew what the fuel consumption rate of the airplane was. The pilot and pilot rated passenger held multiengine airplane certificates. The pilot also held a certified flight instructor (CFI) certificate with a single-engine airplane rating, and the pilot-rated passenger held a CFI certificate with single-engine and multiengine land ratings. According to the operator, both pilots had used the accident airplane in their training towards their multiengine airplane certificates and that the purpose of the accident flight was for both pilots to accumulate flight time. The airplane was certified under Civil Air Regulations as a normal category airplane not equipped with shoulder harnesses.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which resulted in fuel exhaustion. The dark night light conditions was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05CA041
- Event ID
- 20050113X00048
- Case number
- CHI05CA041
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-12-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 972efea440562970372d9a603824087a8296988e5d2a5d18c3a0aab64daae98c; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:27:22.131Z.