WPR22LA296 · Piper PA-32-300
Cedar Real Estate Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA296
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N841AD
- Operator
- Cedar Real Estate
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1973)
- 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 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the engine lost partial power when he adjusted the engine power while entering the downwind leg of the traffic pattern. The engine did not respond, so he cycled the throttle several times with no change. Unable to maintain altitude, he initiated a forced landing onto a freeway, during which the airplane impacted a freeway barrier and a postaccident fire ensued that resulted in substantial damage. The pilot further reported that he did not believe he turned on the auxiliary fuel pump switch before the accident. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed that the fuel supply line from the engine driven fuel pump to the fuel servo had a torsional twist near the engine driven fuel pump outlet port. The engine-driven fuel pump was removed and exhibited signatures consistent with a preexisting fuel leak at the case split, along with corrosion to the input drive seal area. The pump was tested utilizing a test bench, the fuel pump output pressure was found to be within manufacturer limits despite the preexisting leak and likely did not contribute to a loss of engine power. It could not be determined how much the kinked fuel line restricted the fuel flow to the fuel servo. Downloaded engine monitoring data showed that fuel flow was within the manufacturers specified limits, thus it’s likely that the twisted fuel line did not contribute to the loss of engine power. The loss of engine power could not be determined due to the available evidence.
Probable cause
The airplane’s partial loss of engine power during the landing for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence, which resulted in an off airport landing and subsequent fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA296
- Event ID
- 20220810105710
- Case number
- WPR22LA296
- 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: 961c59c25fdf2acc9243384f588e5e1dc44370a7f664424ccf96482cca1c4f8a; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:38:30.067Z.