CEN17LA202 · Piper PA36 300
Trade Wind Ag Services Piper PA36 300 · Accident: fuel contamination while maneuvering
From Tradewind Agricultural Airport (8TE8) to Tradewind Agricultural Airport (8TE8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA202
- 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 PA36 300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA36
- 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
- N3711E
- Operator
- Trade Wind Ag Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tradewind Agricultural Airport (8TE8), El Campo, TXTo Tradewind Agricultural Airport (8TE8), El Campo, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1978)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 contamination
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting an agricultural application flight when the airplane experienced a loss of engine power. The airplane subsequently impacted an adjacent field in a nose-low, left-wing-low attitude. Due to his injuries, the pilot did not recall the details of the accident flight, loss of engine power, or impact sequence.
The location of the wreckage, the debris field, and the damage to the airplane are consistent with the airplane being in a turn at the time of the accident. An examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. An examination of the fuel system revealed that the internal foam baffles in both fuel tanks were discolored and deteriorated, and they disintegrated into very fine particles when touched. According to the owner/operator, during routine maintenance 5 days before the accident, a mechanic found blue foam, which he identified as coming from the foam baffles, in the fuel filter at the engine. Subsequent periodic inspections of the screen revealed no contaminants. The postaccident examination of three fuel injector nozzles revealed that they were plugged with an unknown substance. In addition, evidence of water was found in the fuel flow divider.
It is likely that, given the condition of the foam baffles and the owner's previous identification of foam in the fuel system, that the particles found in the fuel injector nozzles were from the foam baffles. This contamination, in combination with the water found in the fuel flow divider, likely resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Foam contamination in the fuel injector nozzles from deteriorated foam baffles and water in the fuel flow divider, the combination of which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA202
- Event ID
- 20170530X35230
- Case number
- CEN17LA202
- 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: bd2fe2abf47d84ce63ff599446d468d3cbf248e10bbf637c04c48453f33210c3; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:20:01.927Z.