ANC06LA129 · Piper J5A
Piper J5A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Bradley Sky-Ranch Airport (95Z) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06LA129
- 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 J5A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N35395
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bradley Sky-Ranch Airport (95Z), Bradley Sky, AKTo 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 · 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 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation/exhaustion
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, 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 private pilot was conducting a VFR, personal local flight under Title 14, CFR Part 91, when the airplane lost all engine power during cruise flight. The pilot stated that he performed a preflight inspection prior to the local flight, and there were no signs of fuel contamination. The left wing fuel tank was about one-quarter full, the right wing fuel tank was about three-quarters full, and he said the takeoff and flight were uneventful until the airplane lost engine power. The pilot said he had the left wing fuel tank selected, and was cruising about 2000 feet above ground level. He said he switched tanks, and turned the airplane toward the only open ground in the vicinity. The airplane's engine failed to restart, and an emergency landing was made in a marsh. The pilot said when the airplane touched down, it rolled about 30 feet before it nosed over. In a written statement, the pilot reported that the airplane was equipped with "U" tube type fuel level indicators in the wing roots. He wrote that he believed that trapped fuel in the indicators gave him a false indication of the fuel quantity in the tanks. The pilot said he felt the loss of engine power was due to fuel starvation. He also noted in the section, Recommendation (How Could This Accident Have Been Prevented): "timing in fuel management." The airplane was not examined by the NTSB.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation during cruise flight, and an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA129
- Event ID
- 20060918X01360
- Case number
- ANC06LA129
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-08-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 18585bc6d764c44da9bb7ba16d117e29be18508f4acfdc519a8fdad0b60d3145; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:28:56.181Z.