CEN12LA007 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From ISZ · Blue Ash, OH to Knox County Airport (4I3)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA007
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N6403A
- Operator
- Whittenburg Douglas M
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ISZ · Blue Ash, OHTo Knox County Airport (4I3), Mt. Vernon, OH
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he visually checked the fuel level in the tanks and compared it against the fuel quantity gauges prior to the flight. He stated that the left tank contained about 6 gallons of fuel and the right tank contained about 10 gallons. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot switched the fuel selector from the left tank, which was indicating 1 to 2 gallons of fuel, to the right tank. The flight continued for another 50 minutes, and, during the descent to the destination airport, the engine lost power. The right fuel quantity indicator was indicating 5 gallons of fuel at the time. The pilot stated that when he switched the fuel selector back to the left tank in an attempt to restart the engine, the right fuel quantity indicator dropped to 0 gallons. The pilot was not able to restart the engine and force landed the airplane in a corn field. The nosegear collapsed during the landing, which resulted in substantial damage to the firewall. A postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed that both fuel tanks were empty and a small amount of fuel remained in the gascolator. The reason for the discrepancy of the right fuel quantity indicator versus the amount of fuel in the right fuel tank was not determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper pre-flight planning and failure to ensure that there was an adequate fuel supply on board to complete the flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the malfunction of the fuel quantity indicator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA007
- Event ID
- 20111006X53218
- Case number
- CEN12LA007
- 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: 0faf2530ba4e5d638a3a53bd50f0f41f886a8d0cdb118bd7d2a7285efbba2486; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:49:04.646Z.