ERA16LA142 · Piper PA 23-250
Piper PA 23-250 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Charleston International Airport (CHS) to Martin State Airport (MTN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA142
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N22AM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charleston International Airport (CHS), Charleston, SCTo Martin State Airport (MTN), Baltimore, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1970)
- 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 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
The instrument-rated private pilot departed in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) with the intention of flying visual flight rules (VFR) to his destination. About 90 minutes into the flight, the pilot advised air traffic control (ATC) that he was having problems with the right engine. The pilot switched fuel tanks, turned on the fuel pumps, and restored power to the right engine. A few minutes later, the pilot stated that he was in IMC and requested assistance. While diverting to another airport, the pilot reported to ATC that he had lost power in both engines. The pilot performed a forced landing on a highway, during which the airplane impacted a tree and came to rest inverted next to the road. No fuel was observed in any of the airplane's fuel tanks during the on-scene examination, nor did the accident site display any signs of fuel spillage or blight. Other that the absence of fuel, no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies were noted with the engines that would have precluded normal operation, and it is likely that the loss of power to both engines was the result of fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA142
- Event ID
- 20160327X14957
- Case number
- ERA16LA142
- 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: 9a82d4086cda9146f62660d1c9625f3a7110b876e4a3a72374362b3cb326d45e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:14:33.761Z.