ERA11FA054 · Piper Aircraft Inc PA-44-180 4496249
FIT Aviation Piper Aircraft Inc PA-44-180 4496249 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From PBI · West Palm Beach, FL to Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA054
- 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
- 4 · 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 Aircraft Inc PA-44-180 4496249
- 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
- N883FT
- Operator
- Fit Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PBI · West Palm Beach, FLTo Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB), Melbourne, FL
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot’s most recent flight in a multi-engine airplane was about 1 year before the accident. During initial climb after takeoff, the certified flight instructor (CFI) reported to the tower controller that the airplane had experienced an engine failure and that they needed to return to the runway. The controller cleared the flight to land on any runway, but the airplane subsequently banked left and impacted the ground in a nose-down attitude. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the propeller for the engine that lost power (the left engine) was not in the feathered position and that the landing gear was in the extended position, which is contrary to the published emergency procedure for an engine failure during takeoff. Postaccident download of avionics data revealed that the left engine lost fuel flow and rpm less than 1 minute after takeoff power was applied, and examination of the wreckage revealed that the left fuel selector lever and fuel selector valve were found in the off position. The taxiing checklist for the airplane specified that the fuel selectors were to be switched from the on position to the crossfeed position to ensure that the crossfeeds were working properly; the before takeoff checklist specified that the fuel selectors should be set to the on position. Postaccident ground testing performed in an airplane of the same model as the accident airplane revealed that, when the fuel selectors are moved from the crossfeed position to the on position (or from the on position to the crossfeed position), the fuel selector passes through the off position. The ground testing also showed that, when the test airplane’s left fuel selector was placed in the off position and then takeoff power was applied to both engines, the left engine lost power completely after 36 seconds. Therefore, the loss of engine power during the accident flight is consistent with the takeoff having been performed with left fuel selector in the off position.
Probable cause
The failure of both the pilot and the certified flight instructor to ensure that the left fuel selector was in the on position for takeoff and their failure to follow the proper procedures when the left engine lost power shortly after takeoff, resulting in an in-flight loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA054
- Event ID
- 20101111X83751
- Case number
- ERA11FA054
- 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, coordinates. 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: 6e5cf9a203b43e83867777723375218c1443db63067c771c05909e427f1b299e; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:07:42.956Z.