CEN19LA257 · Piper PA28 235
Piper PA28 235 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG) to Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA257
- 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 235
- 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
- N951TS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG), Jacksonville, FLTo Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG), Jacksonville, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the pilot completed two touch-and-go landings, the airplane was climbing when the engine lost total power. He advanced the throttle full forward, but the engine did not respond. The pilot did not attempt to troubleshoot the loss of power and did not check the fuel selector valve position. The pilot flew the airplane under power lines and executed a forced landing in the marsh during which the airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage and ailerons. The pilot stated that before takeoff, the left and right main fuel tanks contained 15 and 13 gallons, respectively, and the wing tip fuel tanks contained minimal fuel. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel selector value was positioned to the left tip tank; the tank was not breached during the accident and contained about 10 ounces of fuel. Based on the evidence, it is likely that the pilot did not verify the fuel selector position and had the left tip tank selected, which did not contain enough usable fuel. Thus, the engine experienced a total loss of power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to select a fuel tank with adequate fuel, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA257
- Event ID
- 20190804X03031
- Case number
- CEN19LA257
- 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: 3ca58eba05fd6b17aadc081652668f16d93dd146d052ed75de75e54611ea365a; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:38:49.334Z.