CEN21LA260 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA260
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4147J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1966)
- 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
- 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 flight instructor reported that the student pilot was taking off following a touch and go landing and was about 5 seconds into the climb when the engine lost all power. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and attempted to restart the engine to no avail. He declared an emergency and chose to conduct a forced landing to an upsloping field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and left horizontal stabilizer. The fuel tanks were intact. A Federal Aviation Inspector, who conducted a postaccident examination of the airplane at the scene, reported that the left fuel tank was completely empty, and the 25-gallon capacity right fuel tank was found about ½ full. The fuel selector was in the “Off” position. No other preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane were found that would have precluded normal operation. The flight instructor reported that they had purchased 20 gallons of fuel prior to the flight. They flew the airplane to another airport where they did a touch-an-go-landing, before flying back to their home airport where they did another touch and go landing. It was during the climb following that touch and go landing when the engine lost all power. The flight instructor could not recall which fuel tank was selected at the time of the power loss. Given this information, it is likely that the left fuel tank was selected and was exhausted of fuel during the takeoff, which resulted in the total loss of engine power and subsequent forced landing.
Probable cause
The flight instructor and student pilot’s failure to properly manage the airplane’s available fuel resulting in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA260
- Event ID
- 20210611103247
- Case number
- CEN21LA260
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-06-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 51cd3712b1364a1a3f41e0140ef9325216f7e714bc5927bb1df548bd0a2036f4; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:09:15.853Z.