WPR09LA412 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From French Valley Airport (F70) to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA412
- 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-24-260
- 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
- N8775P
- Operator
- Kris S Michel · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From French Valley Airport (F70), Murietta, CATo Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, 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
- Approach
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he departed with an estimated 32 gallons total (28 usable) of fuel on board for the 148-nautical-mile flight. He thought that the flight would take about 1.1 hours, which would leave a 1-hour fuel reserve. The left main tank was selected for takeoff, climb, and initial cruise. About 57 miles from his destination, the pilot switched from the left main fuel tank to the right main fuel tank, and he noted that the fuel flow gauge indicated a fuel burn of 12.5 gallons per hour. He said that when he was on approach and about 5 miles from his destination, the engine began to run rough and lose power. He turned the fuel boost pump on and switched back to the left main tank; however, he was unable to restore full engine power. He declared an emergency and prepared to make an off-airport forced landing. Because of terrain and other considerations, he landed on the southbound lanes of a freeway. Immediately after touchdown, an automobile struck the left wing, and two other automobiles struck the airplane before it came to a rest on the freeway. During the recovery, there was no evidence of fuel in the airplane, including the 4 gallons of unusable fuel that should have been in the tank. The pilot opined that the fuel vented from the airplane due to a mechanical problem. During a postaccident engine examination, there was no visible fuel found in any of the engine fuel system components, and there was no fuel staining observed at any of the engine compartment fuel system line fittings or components. At the conclusion of the examination, no anomalies were found that would have precluded normal operation. Examination of the airframe revealed that the left wing main fuel tank filler cap was loose in the filler hole when latched; it could easily be rotated. There were no stains on the top or bottoms of the wings in the fuel vent areas or around any of the main or auxiliary filler caps. There were dark blue stains on the inside of the fuel drain access door, but not on the outside.
Probable cause
A loss of power during approach due to fuel exhaustion for undetermined reasons
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA412
- Event ID
- 20090824X11226
- Case number
- WPR09LA412
- 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. 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: d59e47bd16ae9871c97faabcaf43123743f35cfb8dbf73333aba41800bd8d916; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:50:04.286Z.