WPR18LA194 · Piper PA32 300
Skyhigh Flyers Flying Club Piper PA32 300 · Accident: fuel related en route
From Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (KSBY) to Lake Norman Airpark (14A)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA194
- 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 PA32 300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N8440F
- Operator
- Skyhigh Flyers Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (KSBY), Salisbury, MDTo Lake Norman Airpark (14A), Lake Norman, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1976)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed with his passengers on a cross-country flight with the main and auxiliary fuel tanks at full capacity. About 2 hours and 18 minutes into the flight, the engine lost total power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and declared an emergency. The controller provided vectors to a nearby airport, where the airplane landed hard, resulting in substantial damage. First responders reported that they drained about 55 gallons of fuel from the airplane after the accident and an additional, unquantified amount spilled onto the ground; however, the fuel was drained before the airplane could be examined and the amount of fuel onboard and its distribution at the time of the accident could not be confirmed. Data retrieved from an onboard engine monitoring system showed erratic fuel flow indications concurrent with a sudden decrease in exhaust gas temperatures. These erratic fuel flow indications suggest the possibility that the transducer was pulling in air due to an interruption in fuel flow, which may have been the result of fuel starvation or an introduction of air within the fuel system upstream of the transducer. The fuel lines were not tested, as they had been cut by recovery personnel. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no fuel in the line between the engine-driven fuel pump and the fuel servo, which typically captures and retains unused fuel destined for the engine. A subsequent engine run revealed no anomalies of the engine. Given the available information, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation; however, whether the fuel starvation was the result of fuel mismanagement or an introduction of air into the fuel system could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA194
- Event ID
- 20180629X04643
- Case number
- WPR18LA194
- 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: d3fb09801eed0c71bc2ec252a3cf72556c971ee03219ca8c0c8b72783c3cf90c; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:42:09.760Z.