NTSB CAROL · Event
Event CEN24LA191
Registry · N11NT
FAA Aircraft Registry record.
Make / Model
PIPER PA-28-180
Year of manufacture
1972 · 52 years old at event
Engine
LYCOMING O&VO-360 SER (180 hp)
Seats / Engines
4 seats · 1 engine
Last airworthiness date
19720227
ADS-B equipped
Yes — Mode-S A02B18
Registrant of record
SABB ANTHONY
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot’s failure to switch fuel tanks while en route which resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Factual narrative
The pilot reported that on a cross country flight, the engine lost power. He turned on the fuel pump and attempted to restart the engine several times; however, the engine would not restart, so he landed the airplane in a field. During the rollout, the left tire impacted a barbed wire fence, the left landing gear separated from the airplane, and the left wing to drug along the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the bottom of the left wing. The pilot stated that he was switching fuel tanks every hour, but he became distracted when the airplane crossed a mountain range and he did not switch the fuel tanks. The engine lost power due to fuel starvation. The pilot reported there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- — Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Lack of action-Pilot
- — Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Fluid management
- — Environmental issues-Physical environment-Object/animal/substance-Wire-Contributed to outcome
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2024_CEN24LA191.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel starvation). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗