ERA21LA344 · Piper PA32 260
MMF Aircraft Piper PA32 260 · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
From Foothills Regional Airport (MRN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA344
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA32 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N3862W
- Operator
- MMF Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Foothills Regional Airport (MRN), Morganton, NCTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to the cross-country instructional flight, the airplane had a total fuel load of about 70 gallons, which was enough for about 5 hours of total flight time. After about 2.3 hours of flight, as they approached the home airport about 800 ft above ground level, there was a complete loss of engine power. The flight instructor and student pilot performed the emergency checklist to no avail. During the ensuing forced landing, the airplane impacted trees and terrain about 3/4 of a mile from the airport. The instructor and student had departed with the fuel selector on the right tank and switched to the left tank during the flight. Neither pilot recalled switching back to the right tank during the later stages of the flight. Fire rescue personnel reported that they moved the fuel selector from the left main tank to the off position after the accident. A surveillance video that captured a portion of the final impact showed a misty vapor that was likely vaporized fuel emanating from the trees as a fuel tank ruptured during impact, indicating there was fuel on board. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Based on this information it is most likely that the fuel selector remained on the left main tank until all the fuel it contained was exhausted, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s improper fuel management, 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 ERA21LA344
- Event ID
- 20210830103769
- Case number
- ERA21LA344
- 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: 193d974c40af0bf03d3fb485400a0be179b4e89cb91b6ed235a751390467ba3b; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:27:49.989Z.