WPR19LA136 · Piper PA28R 200
Piper PA28R 200 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW) to Bartow Executive Airport (BOW)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA136
- 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 PA28R 200
- 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
- N2134T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW), Bartow, FLTo Bartow Executive Airport (BOW), Bartow, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Approach · IFR initial approach
- 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 (partial)
- 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 systems
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructional flight was in-bound to the initial approach fix to practice a simulated instrument approach when the engine began to fluctuate and sputter. The flight instructor switched fuel tanks and turned on the fuel pump to no avail. The airplane was unable to reach a nearby airport, so the flight instructor accomplished a forced landing in an open field. During the forced landing, the airplane’s left wing sustained substantial damage when the landing gear struck a rut in the field. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no pre-impact anomalies. During the first of several engine runs, the engine started uneventfully but subsequently surged and stopped. Pressure was applied to the fuel system and fuel was observed leaking out of the top two vent holes of the fuel selector. The fuel selector was subsequently bypassed, and the engine started and ran with no additional anomalies noted.
The fuel selector was removed and examined. During a pressure test, when the fuel valve was positioned to the left or right tank position, a fuel leak occurred again from the vent holes. Subsequently, the fuel valve was disassembled to examine the housing, shaft, and four O-rings. No anomalies were observed to the housing or shaft. Microscopic examination revealed that two O-rings appeared to have frictional interactions with the inner surface of the housing bore, and the other two O-rings exhibited wear on the surfaces in contact with the inner surface of the housing bore. No additional anomalies were noted.
The circumstances of the accident are consistent with air entering the fuel system where the fuel leaks occurred in the fuel selector valve. Air in the fuel lines would have interrupted the flow of fuel to the engine, resulting in a loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to worn fuel valve O-rings, which allowed air into the fuel system and resulted in a forced landing to unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA136
- Event ID
- 20190506X71650
- Case number
- WPR19LA136
- 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, cause areas. 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: 6b5156da63aa531021208c310cf810da8d8d0c7652a949a4f49ae4f11c83a241; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:56:15.883Z.