ERA16LA258 · Piper PA24 260
Piper PA24 260 · Accident: fuel related on approach
From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD) to Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA258
- 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 PA24 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N11MT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD), Rockland, METo Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Westwood, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 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 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
- Approach
- 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 related
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot/co-owner of the airplane departed on a roundtrip flight with the right main fuel tank full and the left main fuel tank "down about three gallons." He stated that, based on his preflight performance planning and visual inspection of the fuel supply, the fuel in the main tanks would be sufficient for the flight. The outbound leg was conducted with the fuel selector on the right main tank, and the return leg was flown with the fuel selector on the left main tank. Shortly after being cleared for landing near the end of the return leg, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power, and descended into wooded terrain about 1 mile from the airport.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that the right main fuel tank contained 2 gallons of fuel, that the left main tank was empty, and that both 15-gallon auxiliary fuel tanks were full. The engine was subsequently placed in a test cell where it started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously at all power settings. The co-owner of the airplane stated that the left fuel tank leaked when the tank was full and that they mitigated the problem by not completely filling the left main fuel tank. The pilot likely mis-estimated the fuel available in the tanks during his preflight visual inspection, and it is likely that fuel leaked from the left tank during the flight, further reducing the available fuel quantity. These factors resulted in a loss of engine power consistent with fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management, which resulted in exhaustion of the fuel in the selected fuel tank and a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA258
- Event ID
- 20160718X90610
- Case number
- ERA16LA258
- 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: 69fcfb632ca9588e15da37f60b44214751abe6190038d24690217c9b73ce650e; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:54:58.582Z.