ERA13LA179 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Orlando Executive Airport (ORL) to Tallahassee International Airport (TLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA179
- 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-23-250
- 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
- N625SR
- Operator
- Consolidated Citrus
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, FLTo Tallahassee International Airport (TLH), Tallahassee, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1976)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during cruise flight, the left fuel flow was "fluctuating." The pilot activated the electric fuel pump, and the fuel flow stabilized. After a few minutes, he deactivated the electric fuel pump, and the fuel flow remained "stable." The pilot began the descent from cruise altitude and selected the outboard fuel tanks on the fuel selector panel. During the descent, the right engine began to lose power, and it subsequently lost total power. After the pilot notified an air traffic controller of the engine failure and chose to continue to his original destination, the left engine lost total power. He then maneuvered the airplane toward a nearby airport; however, the airplane was unable to reach the airport, and it impacted trees and then came to rest upright.
The airplane had been fueled 2 days before the accident and had been flown for an undetermined amount of time since then. Local law enforcement reported smelling fuel at the crash site; however, the investigation could not determine whether the selected fuel tanks had fuel in them when the engines lost power. Although on-scene examination of the fuel system revealed that fuel was present throughout the system except at the right engine fuel flow divider, it could not be determined what role, if any, this played in the loss of power to both engines. The reason for the loss of power to both engines could not be determined.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA179
- Event ID
- 20130321X53951
- Case number
- ERA13LA179
- 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: d4bd1ef28829dabf942021e9f2007520b7e71b64f11da570020480f17b950a17; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:09:08.213Z.