ERA23LA144 · Piper PA-28R-200
Space Cadets Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From 210 · Madisonville, KY to Springfield Branson National Airport (SGF)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA144
- 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-28R-200
- 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
- N9420N
- Operator
- Space Cadets
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From 210 · Madisonville, KYTo Springfield Branson National Airport (SGF), Springfield, MO
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased an airplane that had not flown in 22 years and that had an extensive annual inspection completed the day before the accident flight. On the day of the accident, the pilot flew the airplane on a short flight to an airport and topped off the fuel tanks. About 5 minutes after he departed on the second leg, the engine started to lose power so he performed an off-airport forced landing. The airplane landed hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that when electrical power was applied to the electric fuel pump, fuel leaked from the fuel strainer bowl. Further examination of the fuel strainer bowl revealed that the thumb wheel, which secured the fuel strainer bowl to the firewall, was loose and not secured with safety wire. Examination of the fuel system forward of the fuel strainer bowl revealed no fuel was present up to the fuel nozzles. Once the fuel strainer bowl was secured and the thumb wheel tightened, fuel flowed to the fuel nozzles and no leaks were noted. Additionally, one of the fuel injector nozzles was completely obstructed and another was partially obstructed. Since the fuel bowl was not safety wired, it likely loosened from vibration after the annual inspection which resulted in fuel leaking from the fuel strainer bowl. The fuel leak likely starved the engine of adequate fuel to operate normally, and contributed to the partial loss of engine power. The obstructed fuel injector nozzles also likely negatively impacted the engine’s performance during the flight.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to secure the fuel strainer bowl with safety wire, which resulted in the fuel strainer bowl leaking and starving the engine of fuel. Also causal was the obstruction of two fuel injector nozzles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA144
- Event ID
- 20230308106850
- Case number
- ERA23LA144
- 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: f1103f1d53582f66c1e04ff536b0daa3098ce7fc6dfd8961c08a1990f2109066; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:23:58.602Z.