CEN18LA347 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From North Little Rock Municipal Airport (ORK) to Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA347
- 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-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7954W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Little Rock Municipal Airport (ORK), Little Rock, ARTo Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF), Pine Bluff, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Not determined › Not determined
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 and his passenger were on a multi-leg cross-country flight. The pilot reported that he departed with a total of 84 gallons of fuel in the auxiliary and main tanks and flew two flight legs that lasted a total of about 40 to 50 minutes. The fuel selector was positioned on the right fuel tank during the first two legs of flight. Before departing on the third flight leg, he switched the fuel selector to the left main fuel tank.
About 10 minutes after takeoff and after climbing to 4,500 ft above mean sea level, the pilot turned off the fuel boost pump and engaged the autopilot. He reported that the engine then rolled back to idle. He immediately turned the fuel boost pump back on but noted no difference. The pilot switched the fuel selector back to the right main tank since he had flown the previous legs on the right main tank without any problems. The engine then lost total power, and he attempted an engine restart without success. He performed a forced landing to a grassy field, during which the airplane impacted rough terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane. After recovery of the airplane, 22 gallons of fuel were removed from the left fuel tank and none was removed from the right fuel tank; however, the right fuel tank was compromised from impact damage. The postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Thus, investigators were unable to determine the reason for the loss of engine power based on the available evidence.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence, which resulted in a forced landing on unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA347
- Event ID
- 20180822X72305
- Case number
- CEN18LA347
- 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: a17f8c5a8825d4b3cc1e67613e5b7e18d1795672e17c79ff7af1e641ecc9c18f; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:08:22.063Z.