ERA11LA393 · Piper PA-28-161
Euro American School of Aviation Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN) to Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA393
- 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-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N9202C
- Operator
- Euro American School of Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN), Ormond Beach, FLTo Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN), Ormond Beach, 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
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a 1.2-hour instructional flight, with the student pilot at the controls, the airplane lost engine power after takeoff. The airplane was climbing through 200 feet above ground level when the loss of power occurred, and the flight instructor maneuvered the airplane to a forced landing before it impacted trees beyond the departure end of the runway. Examination of the engine and airplane at the accident site did not reveal any preexisting mechanical anomalies that may have caused the loss of engine power. The flight instructor stated that each wing tank contained about 12 gallons of fuel before the flight. According to performance charts in the airplane's operating handbook, at best economy mixture settings, the engine would burn about 8.5 gallons per hour, which would result in about 1.4 hours of flight time for 12 gallons of fuel. The preflight ground checks of 0.2 hours and flight time of 1.2 hours would equate to about 12 gallons of fuel burn for the accident flight. Both the flight instructor and student pilot stated that the fuel selector was in the right tank position throughout the flight and was not switched to the left tank, even though the left tank had about 12 gallons of fuel. This resulted in fuel starvation to the engine when the right tank was depleted of fuel.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from the flight instructor's inadequate in-flight fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA393
- Event ID
- 20110710X72423
- Case number
- ERA11LA393
- 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: 624bb80ec05d3c5c3d89e4caef4e9c4aef267c43021588914d52b752624b7c8a; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:26:13.384Z.