LAX96LA099 · Piper PA-28
Piper PA-28 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Oroville Municipal Airport (OVE) to Q88 · Paradise, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA099
- 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-28
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N992PK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oroville Municipal Airport (OVE), CATo Q88 · Paradise, CA
- 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
- Total 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Seven minutes after takeoff, a total loss of engine power occurred, and the pilot made an emergency landing in a pasture. During the landing, the airplane collided with three fence posts and barbed wire. The pilot reported that he had not applied carburetor heat in response to the loss of power. Subsequent inspection of the aircraft revealed no mechanical malfunction, failure, or fuel contamination. After replacement of the damaged propeller, the engine was started and was operationally tested to 1500 rpm. The engine operated normally. About 31 miles south-southeast at Marysville, CA, the 2255 pst temperature and dew point were 55 and 41 degrees, respectively. According to icing probability charts, the reported temperature and dew point were conducive to moderate carburetor icing at cruise power.
Probable cause
the failure of the pilot to use carburetor heat, which resulted in loss of engine power due to carburetor ice. The carburetor icing (weather) condition was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA099
- Event ID
- 20001208X05162
- Case number
- LAX96LA099
- 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: 11505baa320574cb9a3b91db7249047bffa2d9fbe39e38d7197a7b4c819f1da1; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:54:52.352Z.