ERA23LA117 · Piper PA-28-140
Advanced Aviation Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: fuel contamination while maneuvering
From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA117
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7470R
- Operator
- Advanced Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, GATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and his flight instructor were on a local flight and were practicing maneuvers before returning to their home airport. Shortly after the student switched fuel tanks, the engine unexpectedly lost all power. The flight instructor confirmed that the throttle was full forward and the mixture was full rich. Unable to reach an airport due to their altitude, the flight instructor performed a forced landing to a local interstate highway. During the landing, the airplane’s nose landing gear collapsed and the right wing was damaged. The pilots were not injured. Examination of the engine, including a test run, revealed no evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. During the examination of the carburetor, about 1 ounce of cloudy water was found in the carburetor bowl; no water was found in the gascolator. The flight instructor reported that no water was observed during the preflight inspection. Based on this information, it is likely that, as the student switched fuel tanks, previously undetected water from within the fuel system was introduced into the carburetor, resulting in the total loss of power.
Probable cause
Water contamination in the fuel system that was not observed during the preflight inspection, resulting in a total loss of engine power and forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA117
- Event ID
- 20230125106633
- Case number
- ERA23LA117
- 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: f24af4cabd889d2117aad97dc9e5ac3d84f6caabcfb808fa987f6b885bd8f3bc; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:16:45.064Z.