ERA20CA317 · Piper PA25 235
Piper PA25 235 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP) to Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA317
- 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 PA25 235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA25
- 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
- N7366Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FLTo Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1965)
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a routine banner tow flight in an airplane equipped with a main fuel tank as well as an auxiliary fuel tank that transferred fuel to the main fuel tank via a manually activated fuel pump. The pilot was distracted due to the air traffic control and the volume of air traffic in the area, and stated that he did not activate the auxiliary fuel tank transfer pump at the turnaround point where he typically would have during other banner tow flights. After about 3 hours of flight time, the engine lost power. The pilot was unsuccessful in his attempts to restart the engine, which included activating the fuel transfer pump during the descent. He subsequently ditched the airplane into the Gulf of Mexico, during which both of the airplane’s wings were substantially damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to manage the available fuel supply 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 ERA20CA317
- Event ID
- 20200915X34450
- Case number
- ERA20CA317
- 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. 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: eff1dffb4f5f34fce9c7e02832009e269827d9003139ca9c379b1cce0dd206a5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:02:35.095Z.