CHI05FA180 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Niagara Falls International Airport (IAG) to Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05FA180
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N5360F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Niagara Falls International Airport (IAG), Niagara Falls, NYTo Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN), Madison, WI
- 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, delayed
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inaccurate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a loss of engine power while flying over Lake Michigan. The pilot survived the ditching and is presumed to be fatal. The pilot was attempting to fly from Niagara Falls, New York, to Madison, Wisconsin, without a fuel stop. The total distance between the two airports was 454.8 nautical miles (nm) and crosses over Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The accident flight was about 4 hours and 7 minutes in duration and the airplane traveled about 390 nm. The pilot departed with full fuel tanks or 48 gallons of useable fuel. The fuel endurance for the accident airplane was about 4.5 hours at the 75% best power setting. The listed fuel flow value assumed a properly leaned engine. The fuel flow values for engine power settings greater than 75% were not listed in the airplane performance documentation. The pilot reportedly told a line technician at the departure airport that the flight was "planned for three hours and he had four hours of fuel on board." The accident airplane flew over Muskegon County Airport, Muskegon, Michigan, just before crossing the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. At this point the airplane had been airborne for about 3 hours and 24 minutes. The pilot decided that he would need to divert for fuel a few minutes before completely running out of available fuel. The airplane exhausted all available fuel after being airborne for about 4 hours and 2 minutes. The prevailing winds aloft were out of the west and averaged 30 knots at the accident airplane's cruising altitudes. The airplane was salvaged and no mechanical anomalies were found.
Probable cause
The pilot's inaccurate preflight planning and his delayed en route decision to make a fuel stop, which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and subsequent ditching.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05FA180
- Event ID
- 20050428X00522
- Case number
- CHI05FA180
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-04-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 030e1d0099177a2251ab4392ea763e1ef818fc774e9587ebbe2730133f2cf8f6; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:04:16.118Z.