ERA10LA438 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Douglas Municipal Gene Chambers Airport (DQH) to Douglas Municipal Gene Chambers Airport (DQH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA438
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N8734Y
- Operator
- Thomas B Newman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Douglas Municipal Gene Chambers Airport (DQH), Douglas, GATo Douglas Municipal Gene Chambers Airport (DQH), Douglas, 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
- 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 had been parked outside and not flown for about 1 year, except for a test flight conducted about 1 month prior to the accident. During a preflight inspection, the pilot observed water in the airplane's main fuel tanks, and debris in the right wingtip fuel tank. A series of engine ground run-ups and maintenance was conducted prior to the pilot attempting a test-flight. The airplane subsequently experienced a rough running left engine during the takeoff and impacted trees. Postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed the presence of water and corrosion in the fuel distribution system. Water was observed in both of the main fuel tank strainers and the left engine fuel injector. In addition, fuel drained from the airplane by recovery personnel contained water and unidentified debris. An annual inspection was performed on the airplane about 6 weeks prior to the accident, and additional maintenance was performed, which included flushing the fuel tanks and cleaning the fuel lines to each respective flow divider after the left engine "missed" during the test flight conducted about 1 month prior. The pilot had only accumulated about 22 hours of multiengine flight experience and lacked experience in the make and model of the accident airplane.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during takeoff due to fuel contamination. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection and inadequate maintenance of the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA438
- Event ID
- 20100823X85049
- Case number
- ERA10LA438
- 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: 01297f3a9dccf84bb56498d4cce988585cd556c26548f89cb823941abafe5212; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:55:41.062Z.