LAX06CA026 · Piper PA-28-161
Skyschool Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Odessa Schlemeyer Field (ODO) to Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA026
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N2111P
- Operator
- Skyschool
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Odessa Schlemeyer Field (ODO), Odessa, TXTo Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZ
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
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 impacted trees and terrain after experiencing a total loss of engine power during a night cross-country flight. The pilot notified air traffic control that he believed he had run his fuel tanks dry and was going to make a precautionary landing at a nearby airport. About 12 miles north of the diversion airport the airplane began to lose power, and every attempt to regain power failed. After the total loss of engine power the pilot maneuvered for an emergency landing but was unable to reach the airfield. Information obtained during the investigation revealed the pilot had flown non-stop from Prescott, Arizona, to Odessa, Texas, in 5.3 hours and used 45.3 gallons, for an approximate fuel burn rate of 8.56 gallons per hour (gph). The accident occurred on the return leg of the flight, also planned by the pilot as a nonstop from Odessa to Prescott. According to flight records and the Hobbs hour meter, the accident flight lasted 5.7 hours. With the 8.56 gph fuel burn, the pilot flew the airplane beyond its usable fuel level of 48 gallons. The pilot said there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which was caused by the pilot's inadequate preflight and in-flight planning, his inadequate fuel consumption calculations, and his failure to divert to an alternate airport before the fuel situation became critical.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA026
- Event ID
- 20051206X01940
- Case number
- LAX06CA026
- 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: dbeef738c2425c6d883938954b786b4dc6f6ac79ecbbd734264f3ad02c11f4ac; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:15:20.451Z.