WPR10LA083 · Piper PA-22-160
Piper PA-22-160 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA083
- 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-22-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N9547D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 contamination
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane climbed to about 600 feet above ground level after takeoff and the engine experienced a loss of power. With unfavorable conditions ahead, the pilot opted to turn 180 degrees back toward the airport. The airplane touched down on wet, muddy grass and began to roll onto the asphalt. The airplane nosed over after encountering the lip of the asphalt. A mechanic took fuel samples from the fuel tanks as part of a postimpact inspection. Samples of fuel from the left wing tank, which was selected at the time of the accident, revealed that there was a significant amount of water present. The mechanic opined that the left tank's lower tank panel had possibly bowed up, causing water to be trapped around the sides of the tank. The pilot reported that he did drain fuel from the tanks prior to departure, but that he should have also shaken the wings to induce the trapped water to move down to the sump drains, then rechecked the fuel for contamination.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to water contamination in the fuel system as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA083
- Event ID
- 20091214X95219
- Case number
- WPR10LA083
- 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 2009-12-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ba47c905f566d3f9474c5f0142b949f8bc15e1be61feab32ded208a389f731b4; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:34:14.384Z.