WPR19LA120 · Piper PA 18 225 DD
Piper PA 18 225 DD · Accident
From Challis Airport (LLJ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA120
- 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 18 225 DD
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N727WW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Challis Airport (LLJ), Challis, IDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was descending toward the destination airport after about 1 hour of flight when the engine lost total power. The pilot was unable to restore engine power and the airplane impacted trees about 4 miles from the destination. During recovery of the airplane, about 1.5 gallons of fuel was found in the right-wing tank. The left-wing tank was void of fuel. The fuel selector was found in the left-tank position. Postaccident examination of the engine following recovery from the accident site revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that he departed on the flight with about 14.5 gallons of fuel onboard; however, the amount of fuel onboard at the time of the accident was not determined. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power 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 WPR19LA120
- Event ID
- 20190423X73423
- Case number
- WPR19LA120
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-04-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 57f618f6d07e41f0dbd57c2c0957bfd1c117a0000409e5b9cd0f75820a92496e; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:48:32.523Z.