ANC06LA078 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE) to Cyril E. King Airport (TIST)
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
- ANC06LA078
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N75JF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE), Ft. Lauderdale, FLTo Cyril E. King Airport (TIST), St. Thomas
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 starvation/exhaustion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation/exhaustion
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated pilot purchased the twin engine airplane about two days before the flight. He indicated that the airplane had a fuel capacity of 192 gallons, and had an endurance of 7.5 to 8 hours. He departed on a Title 14, CFR Part 91 cross-country flight for an airport that was about 908 miles away. The airplane was equipped with auxiliary wingtip fuel tanks, and the pilot said the airplane consumed about 23 gallons of fuel per hour. Five hours and 12 minutes after takeoff, after consuming an estimated 122 gallons, the pilot said that the main fuel tanks were dry, and he was trying to draw fuel from the auxiliary tanks without success. He said the fuel gauges for the auxiliary tanks were indicating 1/4 full, but both engines were surging. He stated that there still should have been about 50 gallons of fuel in the airplane's wingtip tanks, and he tried every fuel tank and cross-feed combination, but the engines lost power, and he ditched the airplane about 829 miles from his departure point. The airplane sank in deep water, and was not recovered.
Probable cause
Fuel starvation/exhaustion for an undetermined reason during cruise flight, which resulted in a complete loss of engine power to both engines and a ditching in the ocean.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA078
- Event ID
- 20060705X00871
- Case number
- ANC06LA078
- 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. 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: 4fded3798ac17e20019bd9771a27abb7848fd76735fc0318f56cb4575e237bfb; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:44:41.332Z.