ERA12LA522 · Piper PA-28RT-201T
Turbo Arrow Aviation Piper PA-28RT-201T · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) to St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA522
- 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-28RT-201T
- 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
- N2970G
- Operator
- Turbo Arrow Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TNTo St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), St. Petersburg, 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
- En route · 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 (partial)
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route over the Gulf of Mexico, the pilot reported that the engine began to run rough and experienced a partial loss of power. The pilot declared an emergency, searched for a place to land, and performed a gear-up landing in the water. The pilot egressed and was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. A postaccident engine examination revealed that the No.6 cylinder fuel injection nozzle was blocked with debris. After the fuel nozzle was cleaned and reinstalled, an engine run was performed. The engine started and ran smoothly, accelerated to maximum power without hesitation, and was shut down with no anomalies noted. It is likely that a small particle of debris in the fuel became lodged in the No. 6 fuel injection nozzle, which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to a blockage of the No. 6 cylinder fuel injector nozzle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA522
- Event ID
- 20120822X35417
- Case number
- ERA12LA522
- 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: 80f0975bc191eed9ee2f0d8f088cb4c45d6fadde96a0137df5e47a8e4ec4a228; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:28:11.928Z.