ATL07CA027 · Piper J-2
Piper J-2 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Peach State Aerodrome (GA2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07CA027
- 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 J-2
- Aircraft type
- Piper J-2
- 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
- N16651
- Operator
- David C. Harwell · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peach State Aerodrome (GA2), Williamson, GATo 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 · climb to 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 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
- 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 pilot stated he had flown the airplane earlier in the morning and two other personnel flew the airplane after him. The pilot decided to fly the airplane again, and he drained the fuel sump and checked the oil and fuel. The pilot entered the airplane, started it, and taxied out to runway 13 for takeoff. While on climb out at 300 feet AGL, the pilot made a left cross wind turn and the engine quit. The pilot lowered the nose of the airplane, made a left turn, pulled the carburetor heat out, and pushed it back in before he started a right descending turn to line up with runway 13.The airplane was low and collided with the ground in a right descending attitude. Examination of the crash site revealed no browning of vegetation and no smell of fuel. The fuel tank was not ruptured and no fuel was present in the fuel tank. The fuel lines were intact. The fuel line from the carburetor to the gascolator were removed and no fuel was present in the fuel line or the gascolator. The airplane was released for recovery and transported to a storage facility for an engine run. The engine was removed from the airframe and placed in a test stand. The carburetor was removed and a new carburetor was installed. An alternate fuel and, battery source, electric fuel pump, engine controls and magneto grounding wires were installed. The engine was started and ran at idle power. The propeller was damaged and prevented the engine from being advanced to the full power setting. The engine was shut down with the mixture control.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection which resulted in fuel exhaustion a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07CA027
- Event ID
- 20070202X00132
- Case number
- ATL07CA027
- 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: 59d15415e3cd88385432632551e9d110606f0815c3542ff15622c6f9f1d3c104; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:52:24.648Z.