ERA23LA097 · Piper PA24 260
Piper PA24 260 · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN) to Dalton Municipal Airport (DNN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA097
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 PA24 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N9026P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN), Athens, GATo Dalton Municipal Airport (DNN), Dalton, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1966)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot completed a preflight inspection, including sampling the fuel to check for water contamination, then departed with a passenger for a flight after maintenance was completed on the airplane. The pilot reported that a few minutes into the flight, after leveling off at 3,000 ft mean sea level, the engine seemed to power down, as if the power went to idle. The pilot established best glide airspeed and attempted to restore engine power; however, he was unable to restore power, so he declared an emergency and turned back toward the airport. Unable to make the airport, the pilot performed a forced landing into trees, substantially damaging the fuselage, empennage, and both wings. Postaccident examination of the airframe revealed that the electrical fuel pump would not operate. Disassembly of the pump revealed rust at and around the shaft bearing, indicative of water having been in the airplane’s fuel system. Examination of the engine revealed that the left magneto ground strap was not connected to the magneto and its hardware was not located. Also, debris was observed in the fuel servo filter and water was observed in the fuel samples and gascolator bowl. Based on the condition of the fuel and fuel-related components, it is likely that the loss of engine power was due to contamination of the fuel supply with water. It is unlikely that the loss of one magneto due to a disconnected ground strap resulted in a noticeable loss of power since the airplane had a second, functioning magneto.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to detect water in the fuel during the preflight inspection, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA097
- Event ID
- 20221230106513
- Case number
- ERA23LA097
- 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, coordinates, 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: 5436d8302fd213e3879bed009cb37a87143edc112bd50f27cbecde2873b6c748; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:13:04.524Z.