ERA10CA490 · Piper PA32R 301HP
Saratoga Rental Options Piper PA32R 301HP · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA490
- 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 PA32R 301HP
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N9263R
- Operator
- Saratoga Rental Options
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, GATo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Chamblee, 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
- En route · descent
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he completed his descent checklist and moved the fuel selector from the "Right" to the "Left" position. The airplane was 2 to 3 miles from the destination airport when the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot configured the airplane to attain the best glide airspeed and completed a forced landing to an interstate highway. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of pre-impact anomalies or fuel leakage; about 35 gallons of fuel remained in each wing. The fuel selector was found in the "Off" position; however, it was not determined if it had been moved to that position in flight or after impact. Recorded engine data revealed that about 1 minute prior to touchdown, the fuel flow rapidly dropped to almost zero; all exhaust gas temperatures went to zero and all cylinder head temperatures began a gradual decline. Under the supervision of an FAA inspector, the engine was test run and no anomalies were found. It was noted that during the engine run, the engine stopped producing power approximately 1 minute after the fuel selector was placed in the "Off" position, which was located to the left of the "Left" position.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's improper placement of the fuel selector.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA490
- Event ID
- 20100920X10659
- Case number
- ERA10CA490
- 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: cc53f8bbfa6d809d534adc8c7e1bd0103f7966e1d8b57b418a35b06b532699ea; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:16:53.987Z.