CEN21LA171 · Piper PA-30
J Bird Flight Training Piper PA-30 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ) to Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA171
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N7588Y
- Operator
- J Bird Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ), Valparaiso, INTo Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ), Valparaiso, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was practicing instrument approaches in the multiengine airplane with a safety pilot. While in cruise flight with fuel to both engines selected from the respective auxiliary fuel tanks, the left engine lost power. During diversion to a nearby airport, the right engine lost power and the pilots conducted a forced landing to a farm field.
Both pilots thought that the auxiliary fuel tank gauges indicated that the fuel remaining was adequate and did not attempt to select fuel from either inboard fuel tank after each engine lost power. Examination revealed that both auxiliary fuel tanks were empty, while both inboard fuel tanks were nearly full. Fuel gauge testing revealed normal operation, and no fuel contamination, leaks, or anomalies of the fuel system were observed. Based on the available information, the circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilots’ mismanagement of the available fuel, which resulted in a total loss of power to both engines due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilots’ fuel mismanagement, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power to both engines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA171
- Event ID
- 20210401102853
- Case number
- CEN21LA171
- 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: 8603ec982022cc9d73306d535830503fde2e46db5d252ab4696881f6304d4f0c; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:54:53.132Z.