WPR22LA268 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
From Compton Woodley Airport (CPM) to Compton Woodley Airport (CPM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA268
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N3666K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Compton Woodley Airport (CPM), Compton, CATo Compton Woodley Airport (CPM), Compton, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 76 years (built 1946)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed the airport on a banner towing operation that would follow the Pacific Ocean shoreline. The airplane carried 36 gallons of fuel in 2 18-gallon fuel tanks and towed a banner. His flight profile was 500 ft agl and about 2,000 ft offshore. The pilot began the flight with the fuel tank selector in the left-tank position. After about 16 minutes of flight, the pilot switched to the right tank and the fuel tank selector remained in the right-tank position for about 2 hours 36 minutes. The pilot reported that shortly after he switched back to the left tank the engine sustained a total loss of power. With little altitude to recover, he elected to land in the water, near the shoreline; the wings and fuselage were substantially damaged in the landing. On-scene examination of the airplane after recovery from the water revealed that there was no fuel in the right tank. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed saltwater corrosion on some engine components, but no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Carburetor ice conditions were calculated to be serious, but only at glide power, which was not the conditions at the time of the total loss of power. Fuel samples taken at the airport’s fuel pump and from the airplane tanks revealed no contamination. A review of maintenance records for the airplane revealed no outstanding anomalies. Given that the pilot had the right tank selected for about 2 hours 36 minutes, the fuel burn rate was less than estimated by the pilot; however, the discovery that there was no fuel remaining in the right tank and no breaches of the right tank, it is likely the right tank ran empty before the pilot switched to the left tank.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and the pilot’s mismanagement of the available fuel at an altitude too low for recovery. Contributing was the pilot’s delayed decision to switch fuel tanks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA268
- Event ID
- 20220725105571
- Case number
- WPR22LA268
- 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: b1816e6c6b273cc876a2befaa400d01605c75b6246dd7f5e63d1fe4340b69e07; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:30:38.532Z.