CHI99LA109 · Piper J5A
Piper J5A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Wausau Downtown Airport (AUW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA109
- 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 J5A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N40888
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wausau Downtown Airport (AUW)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft experienced a loss of engine power while in cruise flight. The pilot, after noticing a drop in rpm, applied carburetor heat and the engine quit. The airplane nosed over during a forced landing in a snow-covered field. The aircraft owner stated, in a telephone conversation, he had flown the airplane the previous day when the engine quit after a normal landing. After exiting the plane he noticed that there was fuel running out of the carburetor and that tapping on the carburetor stopped the fuel from running. The owner contacted a mechanic, who was not an aircraft mechanic, and was told that the problem was from dirt in the carburetor. The mechanic advised running the engine and then shutting off the fuel to purge the dirt from the carburetor. On the day of the accident, the pilot and the aircraft owner started the engine and shut off the fuel allowing the engine to quit. The pilot stated that the owner said that this would fix the problem. The fuel system was inspected and no anomalies were found. The main fuel tank contained between six and seven gallons of fuel. A post accident inspection of the carburetor revealed no anomalies that could be associated with the reported problem of float sticking.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the lack of suitable terrain for landing. A factor to the accident was the aircraft owner not performing necessary maintenance to the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA109
- Event ID
- 20001205X00285
- Case number
- CHI99LA109
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 4ca603f33f756e578683d3e5ad1007d46f8431eff685e7634814c05ea89cb599; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:40:56.959Z.