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ERA13LA364 · Piper PA-22-150

16 Aug 2013 · Indian Trail, NC, United States

Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route

From Tupelo Regional Airport (TUP) to Goose Creek Airport (28A)

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Event

NTSB case
ERA13LA364
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-22-150

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
N6919B
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Tupelo Regional Airport (TUP), Tupelo, MSTo Goose Creek Airport (28A), Indian Trail, NC
Aircraft age
About 57 years (built 1956)
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 (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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

After departure for the cross-country flight, the airplane climbed to and then cruised at an altitude of 7,500 feet; it then climbed to and cruised at an altitude of 9,500 feet. Near the end of the nearly 5-hour flight, about 3 nautical miles from the destination airport, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot cycled the fuel selector from the left wing tank to the right wing tank and back, but engine power was not restored. During the subsequent forced landing, the airplane touched down and struck a barbed wire fence, which resulted in substantial damage to the wing and elevator, and then it came to rest upright. Examination of the left wing, right wing, and fuselage fuel tanks revealed no fuel in any of the fuel tanks. No fuel odor was noted, and no evidence of fuel spillage was found at the scene. The airplane was refueled, and the continuity of the 44-gallon fuel system was confirmed. Using the airplane's battery and fuel system, the engine started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously without interruption. According to the Owners Handbook, the fuel consumption rate at 75-percent power was 9 gallons per hour at sea level, and consumption rates increased with altitude even with the mixture properly leaned.

Probable cause

The pilot's improper preflight planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA13LA364
Event ID
20130819X93333
Case number
ERA13LA364
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: 98b55887cf46ed68ee03cc06d3f901ddd72b0134cbf1fd6060cb26197723dde3; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:34:35.621Z.