CEN23LA012 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: fuel related on approach
From Johnson County Executive Airport (OJC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA012
- 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
- N4171W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnson County Executive Airport (OJC), Olathe, KSTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1967)
- 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 related
- 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 stated that while the airplane was on the downwind leg for landing at the destination airport, he changed the fuel tank selection to the left main wing fuel tank. The airplane’s touchdown point was beyond a 1/3 down the runway, and the airplane lifted off about 2/3 down the runway for a touch and go. The airplane was about 100-150 ft above the runway, with no runway remaining, when the engine lost power. The pilot attempted a forced landing in a small clearing ahead of the airplane. The airplane stalled and impacted the terrain as the pilot maneuvered to clear trees along the flightpath. Both wings and the fuselage sustained substantial damage. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the airplane had useable fuel and there was no fuel contamination from drained fuel tank samples. An engine test run revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal engine operation. The previous airplane owner stated that sometimes when selecting different fuel tanks on the accident airplane with the selector, if the detent was not hit right on, it could be an issue. A lack of a positive selection of the fuel selector could have allowed engine operation for a short time, such as from downwind to landing, due to the limited fuel available downstream of the fuel selector. Also, a change in fuel system configuration while the airplane was in the traffic pattern does not mitigate the risks from an improper selection as afforded by making such a selection before reaching the traffic pattern altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper positioning of the fuel selector, which resulted in fuel starvation and a loss of engine power during a departure climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA012
- Event ID
- 20221013106117
- Case number
- CEN23LA012
- 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: 9274ceed4cbc834cdfc114bc1d38feccfdf765e2bff5811125e4bfc73935ac81; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:16:30.029Z.