ERA18LA041 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Pensacola International Airport (PNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA041
- 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 PA28 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N747KM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GATo Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1972)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 pilot was conducting an instrument flight rules cross-country flight. While descending out of 8,000 ft, the airplane's engine lost total power. The pilot attempted to divert to a nearby airport; however, there were strong headwinds and the airplane would not glide all the way to the airport, so he attempted to land in a field. The airplane collided with treetops and a fence during the off-airport landing, which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that the intact left-wing fuel tank only contained about 20 fluid ounces of fuel, while the impact-breached right-wing fuel tank was about 1/2 full. The fuel selector was found in the left fuel tank position. The examination did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the engine. Given this information, it is likely that the pilot exhausted the airplane's fuel supply in the left fuel tank and did not switch the fuel selector to the right tank, which resulted in the total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA041
- Event ID
- 20171205X52428
- Case number
- ERA18LA041
- 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: 6e622650ef3b2c93be91460dd1683d0775a419683bcced9347e8ac6f8f235955; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:05:09.478Z.