CEN25LA042 · Piper PA-23-160
Sparrowhawk Aviation Piper PA-23-160 · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA042
- 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-23-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N4143P
- Operator
- Sparrowhawk Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1959)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilots stated that the airplane had flown multiple flights on the day of the accident with no issues reported. They completed a preflight inspection and an engine runup before departing on the accident flight. During the initial climb, about 100 ft above ground level (agl), the left engine lost total power. Unable to maintain altitude, they maneuvered for a forced landing in a pasture off the left side of the runway. During the landing roll, the nose landing gear collapsed. The pilots secured the airplane and egressed without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage. Postaccident examination revealed that the left fuel selector lever was difficult to move from the Off position to either the Auxiliary or Main positions. When the lever was moved full forward from the Off position to the Main position, there was significant resistance to the movement. If the lever was released, it would spring back toward the Off position with notable force. The left engine fuel control cable between the fuel control support arm and the fuel shutoff valves exhibited binding and was slow to actuate. With this control cable disconnected and the fuel selector On, an engine functional test run was completed with no anomalies noted. Additionally, review of the engine data indicated a sudden reduction in fuel flow to the left engine shortly before the end of the data. Accordingly, the binding fuel control cable likely allowed the fuel selector valve to remain in an intermediate position that restricted fuel flow to the left engine, which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of left engine power during the initial climb due to restricted fuel flow as a result of a binding fuel control cable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA042
- Event ID
- 20241118195498
- Case number
- CEN25LA042
- 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: 2ac07a592acb6d44e2bf1f67c3b14c5fd5af22f504345a5a07a3707479681dff; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:28:42.922Z.