CHI95LA193 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Garden City Regional Airport (GCK) to Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA193
- 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N55362
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garden City Regional Airport (GCK), Garden City, KSTo Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), SD
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Propeller feathering, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT REPORTED HE WAS FLYING IN INTERMITTENT RAIN AT 10,000 FEET MEAN SEA LEVEL. HE TURNED ON ALTERNATE AIR TO BOTH ENGINES AND NOTED THE OUTSIDE AIR TEMPERATURE GAUGE INDICATED 43 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. HE BEGAN LOSING RPM ON THE LEFT ENGINE. HE ELECTED NOT TO FEATHER THE PROPELLER BECAUSE HE BELIEVED HE WAS GETTING 'MINIMAL RPM PERFORMANCE.' DESCENDING THROUGH 8,000 FEET HE NOTED THE TEMPERATURE WAS 39 TO 40 DEGREES AND THE RIGHT ENGINE DROPPED 200-300 RPM. HE MADE AN OFF AIRPORT, FORCED LANDING WITH THE LANDING GEAR RETRACTED. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED FUEL WAS AVAILABLE ON THE AIRPLANE. THE LEFT ENGINE STARTED UNEVENTFULLY WHEN IT WAS TESTED AND PERFORMED NORMALLY UP TO A MANIFOLD PRESSURE OF 25 INCHES OF MERCURY.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to feather the propeller on the left engine during the descent. A factor was the carburetor icing weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA193
- Event ID
- 20001207X03673
- Case number
- CHI95LA193
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-06-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 706536e86cad56fe23bead4777528eb68478f8159c436a660cf38810dc082728; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:51:47.459Z.