CEN20LA314 · Piper PA28R 200
Anson Air Piper PA28R 200 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR) to Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA314
- 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
- N15302
- Operator
- Anson Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR), Houston, TXTo Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR), Houston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was operating at cruise altitude on a night cross-country flight when the engine lost all power. While in communication with an air traffic controller after the loss of engine power, the pilot reported that the airplane had 10 gallons of fuel on-board. The pilot executed a forced landing to a residential area.
Examination of the airplane, including its engine and fuel system revealed no anomalies that would have prevented normal operation. However, both fuel tanks were compromised during the accident and an accurate determination of the fuel onboard at the time of the accident was not possible.
According to recorded flight data, the flight lasted 4 hours and 40 minutes. Based on the airplane’s usable fuel capacity of 48 gallons and fuel burn rates derived from the pilot’s operating manual, the airplane likely had fuel remaining onboard at the time the engine quit. However, the airplane was equipped with two separate fuel tanks that could be selected by the pilot individually but not simultaneously. It is possible that the selected fuel tank was empty while the other fuel tank had fuel remaining. Since both fuel tanks were compromised during the accident, it was not possible to determine if this was the case.
The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined from the available information.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for a reason that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA314
- Event ID
- 20200728X82604
- Case number
- CEN20LA314
- 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: 7db38053899742b79c5d5b670c0feb6d0de3a5f31b6bf62dbdf354924b4f4761; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:18:25.025Z.