WPR20LA223 · Piper PA 30
Piper PA 30 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS) to Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA223
- 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 30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N8488Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS), Austin, TXTo Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after an uneventful takeoff with a full fuel load, he proceeded to his destination. After the climb, he positioned the fuel selectors to the auxiliary tanks for about 45 minutes and then switched them back to the main fuel tank position. About 3 hours and 15 minutes into the flight, the right engine surged twice and subsequently quit producing power. He briefly tried switching to the auxiliary fuel tank, but the engine failed to restart. The pilot did not try the cross-feed selection. The pilot notified air traffic control that he was making an off-airport emergency landing because he was unable to maintain altitude and there were no nearby airports. The airplane touched down on desert terrain and during the landing roll, the right wing collided with a fence.
There was no fuel in the right main tank, minimal fuel in the right auxiliary tank, and fuel was found in the right fuel selector bowl. There was no evidence of leakage or blockage in the right fuel system. The left fuel tanks contained fuel. The manufacturer recommends that in the event of an engine emergency, the pilot should use the cross-feed option. Use of the cross-feed selection would have allowed fuel from the left-wing tanks to be fed to the right engine. It is likely that if the pilot had used the cross-feed, the right engine would have had sufficient fuel to run from the left fuel tanks.
The right engine was put on a test stand and was run at various rpms with no defects noted. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation of the right engine or fuel system.
Probable cause
The total loss of power in the right engine due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to follow the manufacturer-recommended procedure after the loss of power in the right engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA223
- Event ID
- 20200715X70736
- Case number
- WPR20LA223
- 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, 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: 2866732dc0c07f7bd5bed63b8c3590f152b33d6b4ad504e26d661a7b1d4feaec; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:09:22.503Z.