LAX05CA301 · Piper PA 28-181
Air Desert Pacific Piper PA 28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Brackett Field (POC) to Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA301
- 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 28-181
- 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
- N8103X
- Operator
- Air Desert Pacific
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CATo Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS), Santa Rosa, CA
- 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
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inaccurate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with a fence during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported that he flew on the left fuel tank for start-up, taxi, and takeoff. After reaching his cruise altitude of 8,500 feet, he switched to the right fuel tank approximately 45 minutes into the flight. When the right fuel gauge was indicating "zero," the pilot switched back to the left fuel tank while making stair step descents to his final destination. About 4 miles north of the accident location and 18 miles south of his destination, the engine began sputtering and he switched the fuel selector to the right tank and turned on the electric fuel pump. The engine started to run normally, but the fuel indicator on the left tank was reading over 5 gallons and the right tank was indicating zero gallons. He immediately reversed course toward an airport he had just overflown and planned to land on runway 11. Due to a departing airplane on runway 29, the pilot maneuvered to land on runway 29 and entered the downwind leg of the traffic pattern. As he entered downwind, the engine began sputtering again and then lost power. The pilot attempted to land on runway 29 and made s-turns to dissipate the excessive altitude in order to make the runway. Prior to touching down, the pilot extended two notches of flaps. Upon touchdown, he applied the brakes but the airplane overran the runway, went through a fence, and came to rest on a golf course. The airport manager immediately responded to the accident site and found that there was no fuel in the fuel tanks or on the ground. About 1 ounce of clean fuel was found in the gascolator. Using the fuel flow for 75 percent best power from the performance charts in the aircraft flight manual for the trip elapsed time, including the allowances for takeoff and climb fuel burn, yields a total fuel consumption of 49.25 gallons. The airplane's usable fuel is 48 gallons.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA301
- Event ID
- 20051013X01642
- Case number
- LAX05CA301
- 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: 2674574ed326c656d9c7408d4e5a85a080c33e2eca0735b772076c5c2dc63d4b; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:21:48.168Z.