DFW07CA202 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 81N2 · Greenwood, IN to Taylor, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07CA202
- 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-24-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N6017P
- Operator
- Charles D. Wiseman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 81N2 · Greenwood, INTo Taylor, TX
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 2,000-hour private pilot reported that his single-engine airplane lost power while at altitude of 8,000 feet MSL during a night VFR flight. As a precaution, the pilot elected to initiate the descent to his destination airport after successfully restarting the engine. While descending to the airport, the engine lost power a second time and the pilot elected to perform a gear-up forced landing to an open field 2 nautical miles north east of his intended destination. Additionally, the pilot noted that the right fuel gauge indicated one-fourth full and the left fuel gauge indicated an unknown low amount of fuel. The airplane sustained structural damage during the forced landing. The 3 occupants reported that they were able to egress from the airplane unassisted. Having flown this route multiple times, the pilot stated that he always landed with 45 minutes of fuel in reserve. The pilot added that the fuel gauges on his airplane were usually accurate and he was unaware of his low fuel condition until after the engine lost power the second time. The FAA investigators that responded to the accident site reported that both the left and right fuel tanks had been exhausted. Weather at the destination airport 5 minutes after the mishap was reported as calm winds, visibility 10 statute miles, with clear skies, temperature 23 degrees Celsius, dew point 18 degrees Celsius, and altimeter 30.08 inches of Mercury.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as result of the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision. Contributing factors were the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing and the dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07CA202
- Event ID
- 20071113X01786
- Case number
- DFW07CA202
- 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 2007-09-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f4143ba90c43cffa07e262d7baa2b977be5b03429d23dd4a3ab41460657365ba; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:25:06.858Z.