ERA23LA232 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From St Clair County Airport (PLR) to Monroe County Aeroplex Airport (MVC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA232
- 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 PA28 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N1347T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Clair County Airport (PLR), Pell City, ALTo Monroe County Aeroplex Airport (MVC), Monroeville, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1972)
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 reported that he performed a preflight inspection and observed 48 gallons of fuel in the fuel tanks before departing on the cross-country flight using fuel from the right wing fuel tank. About 30 minutes into the flight, he switched to the left wing fuel tank, and about 25 minutes later, the airplane engine lost power. He attempted to restore engine power; however, he did not move the fuel selector back to the right wing fuel tank and the engine did not regain power. The pilot attempted a forced landing to a field; however, the airplane impacted an area of pine trees before the field, resulting in substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage.
Postaccident examination revealed that the fuel selector was positioned to the left tank, and the left wing fuel sump drain was in the open and locked position. The left wing fuel tank was mostly intact and void of fuel. Review of a photo of the airplane taken several minutes after the accident revealed fuel staining on the left flap aft of the fuel drain, consistent with fuel leakage during the flight.
It is likely that when sampling the fuel from the left wing before the flight, the pilot inadvertently twisted the sump drain into the up and locked open position, allowing fuel to drain during the entire flight, resulting in fuel starvation. Had the pilot followed the emergency checklist procedures and switched to the right wing fuel tank he would have likely been able to restore power to the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper preflight inspection, during which the left wing fuel sump drain was moved to and left in the open and locked position, allowing for fuel to drain during the flight and resulting in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to follow the emergency checklist by not switching fuel tanks following the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA232
- Event ID
- 20230516174541
- Case number
- ERA23LA232
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-05-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0cb84e844ea32203cfbf4956f68b032540b7ee43094401d83bdbb00eba06ca4e; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:36:48.353Z.