WPR14LA027 · Piper PA-23-150 Apache D
Piper PA-23-150 Apache D · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA027
- 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-23-150 Apache D
- 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
- N3162P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 control in flight
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot, who did not have a multiengine rating, reported that, during takeoff, the airplane's nose starting turning left; he did not realize that it was due to the left engine losing power. As a result, he did not perform the engine failure emergency procedure. A witness reported hearing one of the engines "misfiring" and subsequently seeing the airplane drift left, roll into a steep left bank, and then impact the ground.
Postaccident examination revealed no fuel in the left engine's fuel strainer and carburetor; the right engine's fuel strainer and carburetor both contained fuel. Fuel was present in both the left and right wing fuel tanks, and no evidence of fuel contamination was found. The left engine-driven fuel pump's diaphragm was found to be brittle and cracked in several locations, which resulted in its inability to provide sufficient fuel pressure to maintain engine power during takeoff. No other anomalies were found with the left engine's fuel system. The electric fuel boost pump switches were both found in the "off" position, indicating that the pilot had not turned them on before takeoff as called for in both the owner's handbook before takeoff checklist and the before takeoff checklist located on a placard on the instrument panel. If the pilot had turned on the electric fuel boost pumps, the left engine would not have lost power because the electric pump would have compensated for the malfunction of the engine-driven pump.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during takeoff following the loss of left engine power due to the failure of the left engine-driven fuel pump’s diaphragm. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to use the electric fuel boost pumps for takeoff in accordance with checklist procedures and to conduct the engine failure emergency procedure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA027
- Event ID
- 20131023X22139
- Case number
- WPR14LA027
- 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: 9731162318d0aaee6d204cbe174a9bf461f9f44fe42a9b12c2c06c8422ea0303; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:00:19.009Z.