ERA10LA439 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Skyhaven Airport (76N) to Skyhaven Airport (76N)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA439
- 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
- N4850A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skyhaven Airport (76N), Tunkhannock, PATo Skyhaven Airport (76N), Tunkhannock, PA
- 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 starvation
- 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) and private pilot departed on a local instructional flight with approximately 18 gallons of fuel on board. The CFI reported that the fuel valve had been selected to the right fuel tank for takeoff. On the fourth takeoff, when the airplane was about 50 feet above ground level, the engine lost all power. The CFI then switched the fuel selector valve to the left fuel tank and the engine restarted; however, the airplane impacted a tree, landed in the river, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left wing spar and lower portion of the firewall sustained substantial damage. Compression was confirmed on all engine cylinders, fuel was found in the carburetor, and the fuel screens were free of debris. According to the engine’s manufacturer, up to 14 gallons per hour of fuel could be consumed at full power. The airplane’s right fuel quantity gauge was placarded with “No take-off on right tank with less than 1/3 tank." It is likely that the right fuel tank was less than one-third full and on the initial climb the engine was starved of fuel.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during the initial climb due to the pilots' inadequate in-flight fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA439
- Event ID
- 20100824X95829
- Case number
- ERA10LA439
- 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: f85aa294d0ddf8d10d3cac773bf38e15042c9b1b478f63b3ab5cd14b98a35327; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:57:15.473Z.