CEN15LA216 · Piper PA 28-235
Piper PA 28-235 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Anderson Municipal Darlington Field (AID) to De Kalb County Airport (GWB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA216
- 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 28-235
- 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
- N8703W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anderson Municipal Darlington Field (AID), Anderson, INTo De Kalb County Airport (GWB), Auburn, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he departed on a 76-mile cross-country flight with about 5 gallons of fuel in the left main fuel tank, about 16 gallons in the right main tank, and 6 gallons in the right wingtip fuel tank. About 31 miles from the destination, with the left main fuel tank selected, the engine experienced a total loss of power and the pilot conducted a forced landing to a two-lane highway. During the landing, the airplane collided with the rear of a truck, separating the right wing. The airplane came to rest inverted in a ditch about 250 ft from the initial impact point.
The pilot reported that the entire flight was conducted on the left main fuel tank. Given the expected fuel consumption and distance traveled before the loss of power, the accident is consistent with the pilot's fuel mismanagement, which resulted in the engine being starved of available fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA216
- Event ID
- 20150504X54010
- Case number
- CEN15LA216
- 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: b5c194eab3099f495b90217acb9f8e7146b93efd465159b3218bedc0f34464e2; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:17:01.156Z.