MIA08CA154 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Hunter Airport (06TN) to Houston County Airport (M93)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08CA154
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N4377J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hunter Airport (06TN), Columbia, TNTo Houston County Airport (M93), Mc Kinnon, TN
- 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
- 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
- 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 of a Piper PA-28-140 stated that he estimated he had about 12 gallons of fuel when he started the airplane and departed to attend a breakfast fly-in. He climbed to a cruising altitude of 2,500 feet for the planned 35 to 40-minute-flight. When he was between 3.5 to 4 miles from his destination airport, he initiated a descent down to 2,000 feet and leveled the airplane. The engine sputtered and he initially thought he had a problem with carburetor ice. He applied carburetor heat, turned the boost pump on, checked the mixture was full rich, pumped the throttle, and the engine stopped. He initiated a forced landing to the trees when he realized he could not land at the destination airport. The pilot stated he did not have any mechanical problems with the airplane before the accident and "the loss of engine power was due to fuel starvation." Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the left and right main fuel tanks were not ruptured. No fuel was present in the left main fuel tank and about 1 cup of fuel was present in the right main fuel tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel consumption calculations which led to fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08CA154
- Event ID
- 20080905X01399
- Case number
- MIA08CA154
- 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: 1912387f7017c9a1a9c56b92a44c8c1a88dc58b3b96d6212d5e56bee0ead11c1; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:10:08.822Z.