WPR25LA183 · Piper PA-32RT-300T
Lance Group Piper PA-32RT-300T · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU) to Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport (PUW)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA183
- 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-32RT-300T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N31998
- Operator
- Lance Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), Provo, UTTo Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport (PUW), Pullman, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1978)
- 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 · descent
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, as he neared his destination, he became distracted by worsening weather conditions and forgot to switch fuel tanks. As a result, the fuel was depleted from the right fuel tank, and the airplane suffered a total loss of engine power. While attempting to restart the engine, the pilot intended to the move the selector to the left tank, but inadvertently moved the fuel selector from the right tank to the off position instead. Unable to restart the engine, the pilot selected a field to perform a forced landing. Prior to touchdown, the pilot realized the fuel was selected off and moved the fuel selector to the left tank; however, before power could be restored, the airplane impacted terrain, resulting in substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management resulting in fuel starvation, a total loss of engine power, and a subsequent off-airport forced landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s reduced fuel level monitoring due to an inflight distraction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA183
- Event ID
- 20250623200368
- Case number
- WPR25LA183
- 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: 61aef35baa3d14b9b558bdbbd316b2b9fc600243ba7652ab57ef80bff36112e0; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:59:27.707Z.