CEN22LA065 · Piper PA-24-250
High Country Tree Gallery Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Blake Field (AJZ) to Blake Field (AJZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA065
- 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-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N543AS
- Operator
- High Country Tree Gallery
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blake Field (AJZ), Delta, COTo Blake Field (AJZ), Delta, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1962)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during a flight to demonstrate the airplane to a prospective buyer and during the climb after completing a touch and go about 200 feet agl, the engine lost power. The pilot changed the selected fuel tank and activated the fuel boost pump; however, engine power was not restored. The pilot executed a forced landing to an open field. The fuselage sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported he had visually checked the fuel level in each tank before the flight. The right main fuel tank was selected for the entire flight, and it was observed to be empty after the accident. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation and that the power loss was likely due to fuel mismanagement.
Probable cause
Fuel starvation resulting in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA065
- Event ID
- 20211209104376
- Case number
- CEN22LA065
- 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: ef59f6ff4fe1daedd7158795d03a52a158c669a1ce47c3c50cedd7bd0c370d7c; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:49:05.831Z.