ERA13LA110 · Piper PA-28R-180
The Flight School of Gwinnett Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU) to Barrow County Airport (WDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA110
- 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-28R-180
- 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
- N3898T
- Operator
- Flight School of Gwinnett
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, GATo Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, GA
- 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 downwind
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in the airport traffic pattern, the airplane’s engine lost all power. Subsequently, the flight instructor attempted to glide to a runway. The airplane touched down on the runway but was not aligned and traveled off the right side into a bog. Following the accident, the engine was started, but it only ran for about 10 seconds and then lost all power again. Further examination revealed that, when the engine ran briefly, fuel leaked from the inlet side of the engine-driven fuel pump due to a cracked fuel pump line fitting O-ring seal. The airplane's most recent annual inspection had been completed about 2 months before the accident. At that time, the engine had accumulated about 1,578 hours since its last overhaul about 16 years before the accident, which exceeded the engine manufacturer’s recommended time interval for overhaul of every 2,000 hours or 12 years, whichever came first. The airplane had been operated for about 15 hours since its most recent annual inspection; however, a cracked O-ring seal might not be detected during an annual inspection if the engine was not leaking fuel at that time.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to a cracked fuel pump line fitting O-ring seal at the inlet to the engine driven fuel pump. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the aircraft operator to comply with the engine manufacturer’s recommended time interval for overhaul.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA110
- Event ID
- 20130113X42535
- Case number
- ERA13LA110
- 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, 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: c741f656321e33126064ab49d8ccf7eda86380fc87dd9bd7c6c750ceb07a4721; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:44:26.378Z.