FTW97LA230 · Piper PA-32-300T
Piper PA-32-300T · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO) to 8V1
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA230
- 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-32-300T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8056Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO), Durango, COTo 8V1
- 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 · descent
- 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 › Proper alignment, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that during his decent into Del Norte, Colorado, the engine began running rough 'with almost a total loss of power.' Although the engine continued to operate, attempts to restore full power were unsuccessful. The pilot said that his attention was diverted by the rough running engine, and he inadvertently allowed the airplane to touch down with the nose and right main landing gear on the runway and the left main landing gear on the runway shoulder. When he attempted to return the airplane to the runway, the left main landing gear struck the lip of a taxiway and collapsed. Postaccident examination of the engine disclosed the fuel injector nozzles were partially blocked by a gummy residue.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain proper runway alignment. Factors were his attention being diverted by a rough running engine because the fuel injectors were partially blocked.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA230
- Event ID
- 20001208X08127
- Case number
- FTW97LA230
- 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: b760c7456b45b11497450f9cc9cd3b4e372ef8d8c0e7a78f2f893d510ce6d900; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:27:14.399Z.