CEN16FA001 · Piper PA 28-140
Piper PA 28-140 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Huntsville Regional Airport (UTS) to Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport (CXO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16FA001
- 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
- 1 · 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 28-140
- 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
- N3552K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Huntsville Regional Airport (UTS), Huntsville, TXTo Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport (CXO), Conroe, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1967)
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A mechanic who worked for the fixed-based operator (FBO) at the airport reported that, on the day of the accident, the private pilot taxied the airplane to the maintenance hangar where he inflated the nose tire. The pilot told the mechanic he was flying the airplane to a nearby airport because someone there was interested in purchasing the airplane. No known witnesses saw the airplane take off. The air traffic control tower at the nearby airport did not have a record of the airplane landing there. The pilot was reported missing, and the wreckage was located later that evening on property adjacent to the departure airport.
The airplane came to rest inverted in a small clearing in a wooded area. The fuel selector was found in the "off" position. The left-wing fuel tank contained 2 cups of fuel, and the right-wing fuel tank contained about 4 gallons of fuel. A small amount of fuel was dripping from the right fuel cap before the airplane was righted. No evidence of fuel drainage from the left fuel tank was found. The airplane was not equipped with an ELT which likely contributed to the delay in locating the airplane. An examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have prevented normal operation. Damage to the starter housing from impact with the ring gear was consistent with slow rotation/no power at the time of impact. Based on the evidence, it is likely the engine lost power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from the pilot shutting off the fuel supply to the engine.
Although the autopsy and medical records showed that the pilot had arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and kidney stones, there was no evidence to suggest the pilot suffered an acute cardiac event or other medical incapacitation during the accident flight. A low therapeutic level of diphenhydramine, a sedating common over-the-counter antihistamine used to treat the common cold and hay fever, was detected in the pilot's heart and urine; however, it could not be determined whether the pilot was impaired by the effects of the drug at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement off the fuel supply to the engine, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16FA001
- Event ID
- 20151003X00609
- Case number
- CEN16FA001
- 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, coordinates. 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: 7432d57284b2867b059ef9f4b65685c46f2215e7e152fbd00d1cd4c27722905f; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:31:57.206Z.