CEN12LA401 · Piper PA-23
Piper PA-23 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Akron Canton Regional Airport (KCAK) to Mallory Airport (WV12)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA401
- 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-23
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N3170P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Akron Canton Regional Airport (KCAK), Akron, OHTo Mallory Airport (WV12), South Charleston, WV
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the left engine lost power so the pilot diverted to an alternate airport for landing. After the left engine was secured, the airplane was not maintaining altitude so the pilot selected an off-airport site short of the alternate airport to land. While approaching the off-airport site, the right engine lost power, and the airplane was substantially damaged during the forced landing. An examination of the fuel system revealed an extensive amount of corrosion consistent with the continued presence of water over an extended period. Both engine carburetor screens were occluded with particle contaminants, which likely resulted in the loss of power in both engines. The pilot reported that before the flight, he conducted a normal preflight inspection, had 54 gallons of fuel added to both main fuel tanks, and sumped one fuel sump cup full of fuel out of each main tank. Neither the previous owner nor the accident pilot was aware of an airworthiness directive (AD) requiring a special fuel sumping procedure before every flight. The AD also specifies that the procedure should be incorporated into the owner handbook and pilot’s operating manual. The required documentation advising pilots of this preflight procedure was not in the airplane.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of particulate contaminant on the carburetor screens.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA401
- Event ID
- 20120628X11342
- Case number
- CEN12LA401
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 2b350181cc87dca3393d3b68fd6db3cd8e7eec80fc2a551abbf6d1784d662a07; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:39:04.142Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Missing space in the city name; the place is South Charleston, WV.