NYC08LA172 · Piper PA-28-160
Piper PA-28-160 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM) to Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA172
- 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-28-160
- 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
- N5426W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM), Kissimmee, FLTo Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY), Fayetteville, NC
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Wire; 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 flew cross-country from his home airport to another airport, and upon arrival, requested that the airplane's fuel tanks be "topped off." The following morning, the pilot flew to a third airport, where the fuel tanks were again topped off. After departing that airport, the pilot flew locally for about 1.5 hours, and then flew another 1.5 hours back to the second airport. Upon arrival, he requested that the airplane be "fully fueled" before his departure to his home airport, 3 days later. On the morning of his departure, the pilot first went to the fixed base operator, and paid for 4-nights' parking and 42.3 gallons of fuel. During the preflight inspection of the airplane, the pilot did not remove the fuel caps to check the quantity. After takeoff, he noted that the fuel gauges indicated half full for each tank, which he believed to be normal for that indicating system when starting with full tanks. About 2 hours later, the fuel gauges still indicated approximately half full. Some time later, the engine sputtered, then lost all power. The pilot switched to the other fuel tank, which was then indicating about one fourth full, and he was able to restart the engine. The pilot declared an emergency, and turned the airplane toward an airport; however, about 5 minutes later, the engine quit, and the pilot could not restart it. The pilot then attempted a forced landing to a road, but impacted trees. A postflight examination of the airplane revealed only trace amounts of fuel onboard. Fuel receipts confirmed that the airplane was initially topped off with 42.3 gallons of fuel at the second airport, but that during the subsequent visit, no fuel was pumped. When the pilot paid for his fuel, he thought he was paying for two refuelings, when he was actually only paying for one.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight due to fuel exhaustion, and the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA172
- Event ID
- 20080515X00676
- Case number
- NYC08LA172
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 32c2d36c208829c1ec17a41695283a8035b97f801b6dd66eed7c50682570cd3b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:39:18.841Z.