WPR12CA340 · Piper PA-22-160
Piper PA-22-160 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Chico Regional Airport (CIC) to California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12CA340
- 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-22-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N3442Z
- Operator
- Aaron M. Andrus · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chico Regional Airport (CIC), Chico, CATo California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV), Eureka, CA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 › 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 pilot said that he had just acquired the airplane and was flying his first cross-country flight in it. He was not monitoring the fuel quantity in the left and right fuel tanks, because he thought the fuel selector was positioned to both tanks. However, the fuel selector was positioned to the left tank for the entire trip. On short final at his destination, the airplane’s engine lost power due to fuel starvation. The pilot performed a forced landing, which bent and wrinkled the fuselage and wings. The pilot had a total flight time of about 150 hours of which only 5 hours were in the accident airplane make and model.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident were the pilot’s lack of experience in the accident airplane make and model and his lack of knowledge regarding the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12CA340
- Event ID
- 20120802X55528
- Case number
- WPR12CA340
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-08-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 53aea9127771261fc148c892e278b18936a9f1ba3ba9f606f1bcd003cc161197; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:11:43.023Z.