CHI97LA197 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Rockford, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA197
- 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
- 2 · 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-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N183DP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Rockford, MI
- 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 · climb to 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination; Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Lack of total experience in type of aircraft
- Pilot in command › Stall, encountered
- Unknown › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
EDO floats were installed on the airplane on 6/16/97, about 20 days before the accident. The pilot accumulated 5.8 hours total time in this airplane on floats. The revised weight and balance revealed a new useful load of 439 pounds. The pilot weighted 185 pounds, and was carrying a passenger weighing about 170 pounds and 36 gallons of fuel, which totaled 571 pounds. This was approximately 132 pounds over the airplane's maximum allowable gross weight. Shortly after takeoff, the airplane crashed and was destroyed by ground impact and postcrash fire. Ground scars were measured to be 50 feet long. A witness reported the airplane made a series of rpm changes, with the last being the engine going to full power. an examination of the airplane revealed neither a preimpact flight control failure nor any engine mechanical malfunction. A fuel sample from the right fuel tank appeared to be a mixture of auto gas and oil of the type commonly used for fuel in a two-stroke engine. The appearance of the fuel sample looked gold in color and had an oily feel to it when left to dry.
Probable cause
fuel contamination, due to improper servicing of the aircraft; and failure of the pilot to maintain adequate airspeed, while maneuvering to land, which resulted in a inadvertent stall and collision with the terrain. The pilot's failure to ensure a proper gross weight of the aircraft, and his lack of total experience in type of aircraft were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA197
- Event ID
- 20001208X08316
- Case number
- CHI97LA197
- 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: 0d787e99ced34e29347b6d66843134c37f3a6ca90125aa2ea0ce10f2d18dd7c0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:54:21.767Z.