WPR14LA071 · Piper PA 32-301 301T
Piper PA 32-301 301T · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Whiteman Airport (WHP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA071
- 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 32-301 301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8169C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CATo Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 33 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, during the preflight inspection, he noted that the fuel gauges located on the wing tanks indicated that each tank contained about 12 gallons of fuel. After performing a run-up inspection, he completed one takeoff and full-stop landing. After taking off again, the pilot turned the airplane onto the crosswind leg of the traffic pattern, and the engine subsequently experienced a total loss of power. As the airplane began to lose altitude, the pilot switched the fuel selector from the right fuel tank to the left fuel tank position. The pilot unsuccessfully attempted to restart the engine and then maneuvered the airplane to a field to perform an emergency landing. While landing, the airplane's landing gear dug into the soft terrain, and the nose landing gear collapsed, which resulted in damage to the firewall.
Maintenance personnel reported that, before transporting the wreckage to a storage facility, they removed about 10 gallons of fuel from the left wing tank and about 1 quart of fuel from the right wing tank; the fuel system was not breached, and no evidence of fuel leakage was found. During the postaccident examination, the engine was successfully started and run for over 5 minutes at various power settings. No mechanical anomalies were noted with the engine or airframe that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power during takeoff due to fuel starvation, which resulted from the pilot’s failure to adequately manage the fuel supply.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA071
- Event ID
- 20131219X65720
- Case number
- WPR14LA071
- 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: 3549c4bb406a705c52acef8195addae79bd9083cb75ab77e825d27dbb7797389; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:11:56.595Z.