CEN23FA360 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI) to Wiley Post Airport (PWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA360
- 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-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7910P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI), Sherman, TXTo Wiley Post Airport (PWA), Oklahoma City, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1962)
- 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 · 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 starvation
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 was in cruise flight nearing the destination airport when the engine sustained a total loss of engine power. During the forced landing, the airplane impacted power lines and a grassy slope on the left side of a highway. The left main fuel cell and left auxiliary fuel cell on the left wing were breached and could not be functionally tested. The right main fuel cell did not contain any fuel and the right auxiliary fuel cell was full of fuel. The fuel selector valve was set to the right main fuel cell. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not detect any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. After the accident, the pilot shared with a friend that he received a low fuel warning light while operating on the right main fuel cell. The pilot switched to the left main fuel cell; however, engine power did not return so he switched back to the right main fuel cell. Investigators were unable to ascertain what additional steps the pilot may have taken to restore engine power after initially switching to the left main fuel cell. The loss of engine power was likely due to fuel starvation as there was adequate fuel remaining in the right auxiliary fuel cell.
Probable cause
The pilot’s mismanagement of fuel, which resulted in fuel starvation and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA360
- Event ID
- 20230813192852
- Case number
- CEN23FA360
- 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: d738189602f3500cb30158ee8aed24eed5a8760c1f21f5d24dd2b39b9067f40a; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:59:28.057Z.