WPR15LA164 · Piper PA28 - 140
Piper PA28 - 140 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA164
- 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 PA28 - 140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N7099R
- Operator
- Ricardo A Lopez · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1966)
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- 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 for the 365-mile cross-country personal flight with 40 gallons of fuel on board the airplane, and he estimated that the fuel burn would be about 8 gallons per hour, which equated to an in-flight duration of 5 hours. About 4 hours 40 minutes into the flight and about 20 miles from the destination airport, the engine rpm dropped to 1,700, and the pilot's attempts to restore engine power were not successful. When the pilot determined that the airplane would not be able to reach the destination airport, he chose an alternate airport; however, the airplane did not have sufficient power to reach the alternate airport, so he chose to land on a residential street. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with traffic cones and a truck, which resulted in substantial damage to both wings; the truck driver stated that the airplane's propeller was not spinning when the impact occurred.
Several ounces of fuel was recovered from the right tank, and about 6 gallons of fuel was recovered from the left tank; the fuel selector was found positioned to the left tank. During a postaccident test run with 5 gallons of fuel in each tank, the engine ran normally on each tank. When the fuel selector was moved to the "off" position, the engine continued to run for 1 minute 39 seconds and then stopped. However, when the selector was subsequently positioned to a tank with fuel, the engine would not continue to run, likely due to the air in the lines. Although the selector was found in the left tank position, the pilot likely depleted the fuel from the right tank and delayed switching to the left tank, which led to the engine losing power due to fuel starvation, at which point, it could not be restarted.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in fuel exhaustion in the selected tank, and his delayed movement of the fuel selector handle to the other tank, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA164
- Event ID
- 20150518X12459
- Case number
- WPR15LA164
- 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: ee9d2b4e8f3b39418e365fcd726be94399f22902c06f2121b2111246f5eb60fd; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:19:25.662Z.