WPR09LA046 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during an emergency descent
From Calexico International Airport (CXL) to Monterey Regional Airport (MRY)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA046
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N2383R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Calexico International Airport (CXL), Calexico, CATo Monterey Regional Airport (MRY), Monterey, CA
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after an uneventful flight he entered the traffic pattern for the active runway. As he turned from downwind to base leg, the engine lost power. The pilot stated that he realized that he "had forgotten to switch the fuel tanks and had run the right fuel tank dry." He immediately switched to the left fuel tank and noted that he already had the fuel boost pump on in anticipation for landing. Despite his efforts, the engine did not restart and the airplane descended into trees and subsequently impacted the ground. The pilot stated that, "if I had used my landing checklist, I would have not run the right tank dry because I would have turned to the fullest tank for landing." Examination of the airplane revealed that it came to rest in a vertical position within a parking lot. The right wing was partially separated from the fuselage and exhibited structural damage. The horizontal stabilator was also structurally damaged. During removal of the airplane, recovery crews reported that they drained 24 ounces of fuel from the left wing fuel tank and 8 ounces of fuel from the right wing fuel tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel system management and inflight planning that led to a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to use the landing checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA046
- Event ID
- 20081126X30503
- Case number
- WPR09LA046
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-11-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 17bd47e2cdfb696e47a2188eb9a54997e7c1cde4aafa28d5f8f89901cc683db2; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:34:29.754Z.