DFW05CA146 · Piper PA-25-235
Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Soaring Club of Houston Gliderport (89TA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05CA146
- 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-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N7220Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Soaring Club of Houston Gliderport (89TA), Waller, TXTo not recorded
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Partial 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; Stall/spin; 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 563-hour private pilot completed 11 glider tows prior to the accident. Prior to the twelfth flight, he determined that he had enough fuel to complete one or two more flights, based on the how the fuel gauge needle was fluctuating in the cockpit. The pilot departed on his twelfth flight, and towed a glider to 3,000 feet mean sea level (msl) about three miles west of the glider port. After releasing the glider, he turned east toward the glider port. When the airplane was approximately two miles from the glider port, the engine stopped producing power. The pilot entered a left downwind, and when he arrived at the north end of the glider port he felt he was too high and initiated a right 360-degree turn to lose altitude. However, the pilot said that his airspeed and altitude deteriorated quickly and he either "stalled the plane or entered an incipient spin." The pilot recovered near ground level and subsequently struck a tree with the left wing, which spun the airplane around before it came to rest. Examination of the fuel system revealed there was no fuel onboard the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed resulting in fuel exhaustion and a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05CA146
- Event ID
- 20050622X00842
- Case number
- DFW05CA146
- 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: ee96295f0c2aefb45ceb697c78fa2d7088d9970b0d7527ed1bd4157895d0d23d; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:49:49.699Z.