ERA10LA410 · Piper PA-44-180
Orlando Flight Academy Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ) to Heart of Georgia Regional Airport (EZM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA410
- 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N730FT
- Operator
- Orlando Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ), St. Augustine, FLTo Heart of Georgia Regional Airport (EZM), Eastman, GA
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) stated that the fuel tanks were approximately full prior to the instructional cross-country flight. During the descent, the left engine and then the right engine lost total engine power. The CFI assumed control of the airplane and initiated an engine restart, which was unsuccessful. The airplane struck several trees and came to rest inverted. According to the airplane’s pilot operating handbook, in order to begin restoring power, the fuel selector must be in the "ON" position. Examination of the wreckage indicated that the fuel selector valves were in the "OFF" positions; further, no malfunctions or anomalies were found to prevent the engines from operating normally. According to both pilots, neither could recall turning the fuel selector valves to the "OFF" positions. In a written statement provided by the flight school's assistant chief flight instructor, a rear seat passenger would be able to inadvertently retard both fuel selector valves to the "OFF" position. Although it is probable that the inadvertent retarding of the selector valves caused the initial engine failures, there was no evidence to indicate that the engines could not have been restarted had the air start or the engine securing procedure checklists been accomplished and the fuel selector valves been placed in the "ON" position.
Probable cause
Both pilots’ failure to use emergency checklist procedures for restarting the engine after the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA410
- Event ID
- 20100810X91502
- Case number
- ERA10LA410
- 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: b919ab936fa2449b2410e29ab80bbf3f78cee27aee872930804fdfaa2d6a0f13; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:49:25.578Z.