The purpose of the instructional flight was for the pilot to receive a checkout in the Piper PA-32.
Before the flight, the right wing main fuel tank contained 16-18 gallons of fuel, the left wing main fuel tank contained less than 10 gallons of fuel, and both wingtip tanks were completely full (17 gallons each).
The pilot and his flight instructor discussed the fuel status before departure and had agreed to operate the engine on the right wing main tank to correct the fuel imbalance between the tanks during the flight.
The flight consisted of visual flight rules maneuvers and touch-and-go landings at the airport in Lafayette, Colorado. About 1.1 hour into the flight the airplane had a loss of engine power about 1,000 feet above the ground while in cruise flight.
A forced landing was completed to a nearby field, but shortly after touchdown the airplane collided with a berm that caused it to become airborne again.
The nose landing gear collapsed and both wings were substantially damaged when the airplane landed hard the second time.
The pilot and his flight instructor both reported that the entire flight had been flown using fuel from the right wing main fuel tank. Neither the pilot nor his flight instructor switched fuel tanks after the loss of engine power because they were focused on the forced landing.
The pilot stated that based on the airplane’s performance data, the loss of engine power was likely due to fuel starvation.
An onsite examination of the wreckage revealed that the right wing main fuel tank was intact and contained less than ¼ gallon of fuel. According to the airplane’s owner’s handbook, there was about 1 pint of unusable fuel in each of the 4 fuel tanks. The remaining three fuel tanks contained usable fuel.
Probable Cause: The improper fuel management that resulted in fuel starvation and the loss of engine power.
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This June 2021 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Aviation, more than most activities, is unforgiving to the inattentive.
It’s been “a minute” since I last flew a Cherokee 6, but my recollection is that the fuel selector valve is in the middle, readily accessible to both front seaters. It has 5 positions, off, left tip, left main, right main, and right tip. Even the gauges are visible to the right seater, slightly to the right of the left yoke, so it’s surely not very hard to keep track and switch tanks as necessary. The big bird burns a lot, whether it’s a 260 or 300, but there’s still no excuse for fuel starvation as long as any of the tanks have fuel. Even a relatively inexperienced CFI, if he’d spent any time at all with the POH, shouldn’t have had any difficulty with the airplane—in all respects, it’s a pretty forgiving airplane.
I flew many hours in a Piper Cherokee Arrow in the 1970’s.
They have similar fuel systems and you need to change from one wing tank to the other periodically to maintain the balance. Anyway, how the bird drained the right wing with 16-18 gal. in just over an hour?
Probably the pilots faced a leakage and didn’t realize that!!
I think that fuel management is just as important as weather monitoring.
Should never takeoff if there is a question about either !! Same with temperature, keep an eye on it.
Ice is not good !! Ina carburetor or on the wings or elevator.
Thanks for listening.
Dr Owen Mellody pvt pilot
The CFI had 1.8 hours total this make and model. This means that this CFI had nothing more than a check-out flight. This may have been his HI-Perf endorsement. And 309 hours total in all aircraft tells me this CFI was newly minted.
IN the PA32 series (Cherokee 6, Lance, Saratoga) you need to change tanks about every 30 minutes for balance purposes. If you went from Cessnas to Pipers, you have to learn fuel management. And the CFI didn’t get it down in 1.8 hours as this situation tends to indicate. The CFI should have recognized that take-off and climb burns a lot of fuel, So that should have been a tank change point right after leveling.
Engine quit: boost pump on, select fullest tank, mixture rich and trade speed for altitude (as in maintain altitude) until you have to go nose down to not stall. Personal experience, you will lose 300′ before the engine restarts.
Suggest this CFI fly some low wing plane that needs fuel management on a 2 hour X/C to get use to tank switching.
Early Volkswagens from Germany (The People Car designed by Dr. Porsche ordered by Adolph) had no fuel gauge but two gas tanks with an A-B switch between them. It was commonplace when driving those early Volks to run on one tank until the engine quit then reach back and flip the valve to the other tank. Real handy on a high-speed road in traffic. I see that today’s airplanes incorporate the same stupid tank switching scheme as a 1947 Volkswagen. The reason all tanks aren’t drained simultaneously in airplanes eludes me. Cheap engineering in a quarter-$million machine. Perhaps someone smarter than me (an easy task) can explain this primitive design to me. Thanks/Regards/Jim
The early VW beetles had the fuel tank forward of the instrument panel in the trunk. The fuel selector valve hung down, below the dashboard. The ‘main’ position drew fuel from a pipe about 2 inches from the bottom of the tank. When the fuel level dropped below that level, the driver would move the selector to the ‘reserve’ position, which drew fuel from an opening at the bottom of the tank, and had a few gallons remaining.
Low wing aircraft require a fuel pump to pull fuel from a tank to provide the fuel pressure to the engine. The main pump is a mechanical pump on the engine. There is also a ‘boost’ , electric pump, in series with the mechanical pump.
Since the pumps pull fuel from a tank, they cannot draw fuel from 2 tanks at the same time, since when one has no more fuel, the pump will pull air from the empty tank, and the engine will be starved of fuel.
This could be changed by putting an electric fuel pump in each tank, which would push fuel to a selector valve that could have a ‘both’ setting. But, if the electrical system failed, the mechanical pump would require switching to a single tank.
Most newer cars have an electric pump in the fuel tank and are very reliable.
Cessna and other high wing aircraft, with a carburetor, most have a ‘both’ setting, since the fuel flows by gravity to the carb. [ no pump required ! ].
Way back in the 1940s the Ercoupe was designed to pull fuel from both wing tanks to a header tank, with overflow return fuel lines that returned excess fuel to both wing tanks. The pilot never needed to worry about switching tanks or losing the engine because of forgetting to.
Yes, the Ercoupe had the fuel lines connected to a central point in the fuselage, then connected to the mechanical fuel pump on the engine, that pumped fuel to the header tank, which then fed fuel, by gravity, to the engine.
So, no switching of tanks, but it still had a fuel pump.
Yep. And if the wings run dry or the fuel pump goes out, you still have an hour’s worth of fuel in the header tank feeding the carb via gravity only.
What happens if you get contaminated fuel in one tank and can’t isolate it? Leakage, can’t isolate it? Common feed has it’s place, but there is no excuse for being a inattentive pilot.
So we have a pilot and a CFI flying an aircraft that has about 3.5 hours worth of fuel aboard, worried about a 50 lb. fuel imbalance in the main tanks, but neither person can realize that in just over an hour aloft, the right main would be sucked dry! Even more incredulous, neither person seemed capable of reading a fuel gauge!
When transitioning to a high performance airplane one must think of fuel all of the time. At high power settings fuel just disappears. This was an older version as sometime in the seventies Piper revamped the fuel system into one large tank in each wing. I liked the four tank system because it made it easy to keep the reserve fuel in a tip tank.
So did he get signed off on the checkout? Lol
Did the CFI get paid for the check out.
I have high performance aircrafts and all three need to switch from tank to tank, I’m talking about 1,1 to 500,000 aircrafts, I read comments from pilots that have similar aircrafts but one thing you need to understand both the pilot and CFI were probably nervous I can understand the pilot but the CFI should have never taken the job with not having the knowledge of the aircraft, I have a similar problem when l need a BFR most CFI don’t have time in my aircrafts and I need to actually take them up for a few hours so they can get comfortable with the aircraft. I think that’s were this went bad. I was taught during an engine out check place to land then try to get the aircraft running again, fuel the most important thing of keeping an engine running and if your not familiar with the aircraft you’ll have a problem. The other problem they probably didn’t lean the engine most CFI are use to Cessnas that don’t need fuel management that’s why they ran out so quickly . A lot of CFI’s don’t have a lot of hours some 1000 others with 1700 like I mentioned earlier I have over 11,000 hrs in all types of aircrafts including turboprops one of my aircrafts TBM 700, Beechcraft A36, Piper Seneca ll PA-34T200 and a 172 Cessna.This types of accidents happens a lot more then gets reported, A year ago CFI and airline pilot did the same thing neither of them checked to switch tanks they ran out on one wing had to make an emergency landing landed safely but the aircraft still had to be pulled apart. Sorry for the long speech.