WPR23LA203 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA203
- 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 PA-28-181
- 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
- N456Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was conducting a local flight in preparation for the student pilot’s private pilot check ride. The preflight was completed and both wing fuel tanks were filled. The engine was started, and no anomalies were noted during the startup, taxi or runup. During takeoff, the ground roll and departure were normal until the airplane reached about 300 ft above ground level (agl) when the engine started to lose power. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and added full rich mixture and ensured that the throttle lever was at full power. Momentarily, there was increase in rpm before the engine lost all power. He executed a forced landing that caused the landing gear to collapse and damaged the right wing, which resulted in the fuel tank leaking onsite. The postaccident examination revealed that the gascolator bowl bail wire attachment end was not engaged in the outboard attachment hole on the gascolator housing and was resting on the gascolator bracket forward of the hole. There was no observable impact damage to the gascolator or the surrounding area. The gascolator bowl was not sealed to the gascolator housing and was twisted inboard where the bowl’s sump was pointing forward, instead of its normal position pointing outboard towards the cowling sump access hole. The interior surfaces of both upper and lower cowling were covered in a light residue of oil with the exception of the cowling and firewall area beneath the gascolator. The lower engine cowling was removed. The bail wire was not safety wired in place, and the strainer bowl retaining nut was safety wired to the gascolator sump fitting. The strainer bowl retaining nut was not properly positioned on the bottom of the bowl. The gascolator bowl was removed and the seal and screen were undamaged and clear of contamination. The gascolator bowl did not contain any fuel. The gascolator bail wire was not properly attached to the housing and the gascolator bowl likely became unsealed, interrupting the fuel supply to the engine and causing the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the mechanic’s failure to properly secure the fuel system gascolator strainer bowl.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA203
- Event ID
- 20230530192265
- Case number
- WPR23LA203
- 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: c6d1d90cb6ec2a686014022017e7c214727baea4f008b4de69c0f1fd8f711ca1; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:39:25.855Z.