ERA22LA130 · Piper PA32R 300
Piper PA32R 300 · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA130
- 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 PA32R 300
- 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
- N114BR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 contamination
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was interested in purchasing the airplane and the accident flight was a demonstration flight. The owner of the airplane provided a flight instructor as the pilot had not flown the make and model airplane in many years. Prior to the flight, 10 gallons of fuel were added to each wing fuel tank, to bring the total useable fuel to 38 gallons. The pilot further stated that he and the flight instructor then performed a thorough preflight inspection, which included sumping the fuel tanks. The pilot planned to perform touch-and-go landings and the first one was uneventful. While on a downwind leg to the runway for a second landing, the pilot verified that the electric fuel pump was on and switched the fuel selector from the right fuel tank to the left fuel tank. The engine subsequently lost all power and the propeller continued to windmill. The pilot attempted to glide to the airport while the flight instructor attempted to restart the engine, which included switching back to the right fuel tank. The engine did not regain power and the pilot subsequently performed a forced landing in a field. During the forced landing, the airplane struck a ditch, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage.
During a post-accident examination, about 3 quarts of water were drained from the left fuel tank, about 1 pint of water was drained from the fuel system and no water was found in the right fuel tank. The airplane had not flown for about 11 months prior to the accident flight. During that time, it sat outside for several months. The left-wing fuel cap appeared to have a good seal and the investigation could not determine how water entered the left fuel tank.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA130
- Event ID
- 20220217104658
- Case number
- ERA22LA130
- 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: c025566713b70cb76e4ccafc36ecced51a9bfc4b48908ba16eeb34b6aa85f2ca; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:58:19.052Z.