SEA05CA082 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Malad City Airport (MLD) to Pocatello Regional Airport (PIH)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05CA082
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N8715E
- Operator
- Thomas J. Moody · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Malad City Airport (MLD), Malad City, IDTo Pocatello Regional Airport (PIH), Pocatello, ID
- 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; 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departing on the second leg of the cross-country flight the pilot filled both fuel tanks to capacity, 48 usable gallons, equating to 4.8 hours of flight time. After completing the second leg of the flight, which took 3 hours and 35 minutes (3.58 hours), and unable to purchase fuel at the intermediate stop, the pilot calculated he had 1.22 hours of fuel remaining, more than enough to fly 65 miles to another airport where fuel was available. Approximately 20 minutes into the flight the engine began to run rough. The pilot switched tanks, which resulted in the engine running normal, but just as he was about to proceed to an alternate airport the second tank ran dry and the engine quit. An emergency landing to a field resulted in the airplane touching down, bouncing, and impacting two small trees. The airplane then struck a raised driveway before being launched back into the air and hitting the ground, shearing off both the front and left main landing gear. The aircraft came to rest in an upright position after sliding through a barbed wire fence. An FAA inspector confirmed the lack of fuel in both fuel tanks and substantial damage to both wings. The inspector also observed a homemade placard located above the fuel gage panel which read, "FUEL GAGES MAY INDICATE AS MUCH AS 2 1/2 GALLONS WHEN TANKS ARE EMPTY". The pilot reported no anomalies with the airplane prior to the accident, which would have prevented normal operations.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the pilot's inadequate in-flight decision/planning by failing to refuel while en route, resulting in fuel exhaustion. Factors contributing to the accident included the trees and fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05CA082
- Event ID
- 20050504X00551
- Case number
- SEA05CA082
- 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: c9a6b9745021bd45377dcfd0e52f15785079e1055fd81cc6c7d0c8efc7bc9d47; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:04:19.088Z.