ERA24LA164 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA164
- 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-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
- N7538P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9), Mansfield, MATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 63 years (built 1961)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While about 5 miles from the destination airport and maneuvering the airplane for a straight-in approach to the runway, the pilot began performing the prelanding checklist items, which included turning on the electric fuel pumps. When the flight was about 1/2 to 1 mile from the runway and about 800 ft above ground level (agl), the pilot recognized that the airplane was low, so she increased the throttle, but the engine did not respond. She verified that the mixture was full rich and that the fuel selector was on the fullest tank, and she checked the magnetos but did not apply carburetor heat. She observed a total loss of engine power, declared an emergency to the tower controller, prepared for ditching (because the flight was over water while on the approach), and ditched the airplane into the water below.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact failure or malfunction of the engine powertrain, ignition, or lubrication systems. Foreign debris was found inside the inlet section of the engine-driven fuel pump. Although this material matched the composition of inner layer material of a fuel supply hose, none of the fuel supply hoses recovered from the airplane’s engine compartment were found to be missing any section of the inner layer. Also, because the two electric fuel pumps that were on during the approach could allow fuel to bypass the engine-driven fuel pump in the event of its obstruction or failure, the foreign material likely did not contribute to the total loss of engine power.
Although environmental conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice at cruise and glide power, the pilot did not recognize that or apply carburetor heat during any portion of the descent, or after the loss of power. Thus, it is likely that, during the approach, carburetor ice accrued when the engine was operating at a reduced power setting (consistent with glide power), resulting in the total loss of engine power.
Also, although the airplane’s engine failure checklist specified applying carburetor heat, the low altitude at which the pilot recognized loss of engine power significantly reduced the amount of time available to troubleshoot and restore engine power to prevent the ditching.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during final approach due to the pilot’s failure to recognize that the environmental conditions were susceptible to carburetor icing and apply carburetor heat, which resulted in the formation of carburetor ice. Contributing to the accident was the low altitude at which the pilot recognized the loss of engine power, reducing the amount of time to troubleshoot and address the problem.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA164
- Event ID
- 20240405194036
- Case number
- ERA24LA164
- 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: 2b31334c63e1c4f62c4c924cdf1c0cfd64c1bfd6fb1af0b53f0878370c090f7c; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:38:36.959Z.