CEN14CA344 · Piper PA 25-235
Walker Aviation Piper PA 25-235 · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Rhinelander, WI to Rhinelander, WI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA344
- 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 25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N8730L
- Operator
- Walker Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rhinelander, WITo Rhinelander, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1969)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A pre-flight inspection of the airplane before an aerial application flight revealed the airplane's fuel tank quantity was 3/4 full of fuel. Two aerial application flights lasted approximately one hour. The aircraft was loaded a third time. The loader inquired if the aircraft needed fuel. The pilot checked the fuel gauge and informed the loader that there was slightly less than 1/2 tank. He said that the airplane would require fuel on the next load. The aircraft departed and flew for approximately 10 minutes. The engine stopped producing power, the pilot jettisoned the load, and he performed a forced landing on an adjacent field. The airplane nosed over and sustained substantial wing, fuselage, and empennage damage. No fuel was found on-scene in the airplane's fuel tanks or under the inverted airplane. Fuel was added to the fuel tank and the engine operated. According to the Federal Aviation Administration publication, The Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, "aircraft certification rules require accuracy in fuel gauges only when they read 'empty.' Any reading other than 'empty' should be verified. Do not depend solely on the accuracy of the fuel quantity gauges."
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the pilot's improper inflight planning and reliance of fuel gauge readings, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA344
- Event ID
- 20140707X73001
- Case number
- CEN14CA344
- 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: 4f80065a9e4557da5ed4aaafaa1ef8cf3bf6985985dea2fe43e8ea1da9c51282; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:50:56.141Z.