CEN13LA570 · Piper PA 28-181
Piper PA 28-181 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Estherville Municipal Airport (KEST) to Estherville Municipal Airport (KEST)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA570
- 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 28-181
- 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
- N31688
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Estherville Municipal Airport (KEST), Estherville, IATo Estherville Municipal Airport (KEST), Estherville, IA
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off with 34 gallons of fuel onboard and flew to another airport to pick up his flight instructor for a flight review. He and his flight instructor then flew for about an hour and decided to divert to another en route airport to obtain fuel. While en route, they listened to the automated weather observation system (AWOS) for the airport, which provided the weather conditions but no notices to airmen (NOTAMs). The engine sputtered when they were about 1 mile from the airport. The pilot switched fuel tanks and engine power was regained. They circled the airport 3 times while trying to turn on the pilot-controlled runway lights. On the fourth pass, the engine lost power. The pilot made a hard landing short of the approach end of runway 12. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that no useable fuel remained in the fuel tanks.
The airport was temporarily closed due to runway construction. The airport management had issued a NOTAM, crossed out the runway numbers, shut the airport beacon light off, and deactivated the pilot-controlled runway lights. The airport manager stated that they put the runway closure information on the AWOS but it kept dropping off.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to ensure he had sufficient fuel on board to complete the planned flight. Contributing to the accident was the incomplete information provided by the airport's AWOS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA570
- Event ID
- 20131001X95546
- Case number
- CEN13LA570
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-09-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ed9892c27d578e54531ed23feeabdb7219a02502aad53afee48daa2205e142e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:56:07.671Z.