ERA17CA039 · Piper PA 24-250
Piper PA 24-250 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Houlton International Airport (HUL) to Houlton International Airport (HUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17CA039
- 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 24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7682P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houlton International Airport (HUL), Houlton, METo Houlton International Airport (HUL), Houlton, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1961)
- 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 · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot had recently purchased the airplane; he and a flight instructor were conducting a local familiarization flight. After about 1 hour of flying with the left inboard fuel tank selected, he returned to the airport traffic pattern and performed two additional takeoffs. While on the left downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot checked that the fuel pump was on while the flight instructor attempted to determine why the engine lost power. The flight instructor then took control of the airplane and turned toward the runway. The airplane contacted the tops of some trees and landed on uneven terrain covered with tall grass and brush about 500 ft short of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the firewall, fuselage, and wings. Before exiting the airplane, the pilot moved the fuel selector to the "off" position.
A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the wreckage and found that the left inboard fuel tank was absent of fuel, while the right inboard fuel tank was full. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. When asked how the accident could have been prevented, the pilot stated, "switched to the other fuel tank."
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from the pilot’s mismanagement of the available fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17CA039
- Event ID
- 20161109X21610
- Case number
- ERA17CA039
- 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: 2f6a099a17c4a493073b089707b52c134a3bf7276734159dad3e2490c0539027; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:49:12.698Z.