ERA22LA066 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Albert Whitted Airport (SPG) to Orlando Executive Airport (ORL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA066
- 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 PA28 180
- 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
- N5862W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albert Whitted Airport (SPG), St Petersburg, FLTo Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 56 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 › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed a coastal airport at night. After he transitioned from initial climb to cruise flight at 1,100 ft mean sea level, he attempted to switch fuel tanks and the engine lost all power. He then tried to switch back to the original fuel tank, but accidentally positioned the fuel selector to the off position. The airplane did not have enough altitude to glide to shore and he subsequently ditched the airplane in a bay. The pilot egressed and the airplane sank. The airplane was recovered from the bay several days later and substantial damage to the right horizontal stabilator was noted by recovery personnel. The pilot added that he should have familiarized himself more with the fuel selector and that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent selection of an off fuel selector position, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA066
- Event ID
- 20211118104270
- Case number
- ERA22LA066
- 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: 7da7023d5ad9dbf229e5cb7ceb9d814e455759e49c485dfa556bbc899c9dfc77; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:45:50.144Z.