ERA12LA555 · Pitcairn PA-4
Pitcairn PA-4 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Rawlings, MD to Rawlings, MD
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA555
- 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
Pitcairn PA-4
- Aircraft type
- Pitcairn PA-4
- 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
- N3261
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rawlings, MDTo Rawlings, MD
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was climbing through about 150 to 200 feet above ground level after takeoff when the engine lost total power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a nearby pasture. The airplane descended, impacted the ground, and came to rest on the right side of the fuselage. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. The carburetor bowl and fuel lines contained a trace amount of fuel. Upon further examination, debris was discovered in the fuel tank, and large sections of a material were peeling from the fuel tank walls. In addition, there were rusty areas in the fuel tank. The fuel tank outlet did not contain a fuel screen for fuel to travel through when exiting the tank.
Maintenance records indicated that in April 1990, the accident airplane had undergone major repairs and alterations, which included sealing of the fuel tank with a sloshing sealer, use of which was approved at the time. However, in 2009, the Federal Aviation Administration released a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin stating that over time, that sloshing sealer could deteriorate and peel from the internal wall of the fuel tank. Pieces of the sealer could then block the fuel tank outlet, potentially starving the engine of fuel. It was not possible to determine to what extent maintenance personnel examined the fuel tank during the most recent annual inspection, which was completed in September 2012. It is likely that the sloshing sealer compound that was applied to the fuel tank in 1990 had peeled off the inner wall of the fuel tank and blocked the fuel outlet, resulting in fuel starvation of the engine and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from a fuel outlet in the fuel tank that was blocked by peeled debris from a previously approved fuel tank sealer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA555
- Event ID
- 20120910X55707
- Case number
- ERA12LA555
- 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: 4f22362fd9928d2015559b84045dfebcf33ed4033e9bb185a67b1a2be501354c; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:48:15.134Z.