WPR10LA180 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Billings Logan International Airport (KBIL) to New Town Municipal Airport (05D)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA180
- 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-22-150
- 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
- N3351Z
- Operator
- Daniel Miller
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billings Logan International Airport (KBIL), Billings Logan, MTTo New Town Municipal Airport (05D), New Town, ND
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who elected to make a nighttime visual-flight-rules, cross-country business flight, did not acquire a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or Direct User Access Terminal weather briefing prior to departure. Instead he gathered his weather information by making a phone call to an acquaintance who was located at his destination and by checking with the FAA's Flight Watch while en route. As he proceeded toward his destination the pilot began flying over a scattered-to-broken cloud layer, which eventually turned to overcast as he neared his destination. After realizing that he would not be able to get into his planned destination, he attempted to get to another airport, but the weather also deteriorated at that airport as well. The pilot then reversed course and headed back in the direction he had come from in the hopes of finding an airport that had visual meteorological conditions (VMC). He was eventually able to descend through a hole in the clouds, but had to pass up the nearest airport because of the bad weather there. He eventually located an airport with VMC, but his airplane ran out of fuel while on a half-mile final. Although he was able to glide to the approach end of the runway, the pilot reported that he landed on the threshold and the airplane bounced once, then settled on the runway. As the tail came down, a gust of wind hit the airplane, which subsequently ground-looped and resulted in substantial damage to the lower left side longeron.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll in gusting winds. Contributing to the accident was a loss of engine power on final approach due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot having to divert due to deteriorating weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA180
- Event ID
- 20100325X41649
- Case number
- WPR10LA180
- 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 2010-03-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bee1e908b31facbb5135359718cdf008c9a5ee6d88f50aa845d3091d72c67c97; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:47:38.810Z.