NYC97FA159 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97FA159
- 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
- 1 · 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N24565
- Operator
- John A Rolls · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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 starvation; Stall/spin
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Danbury, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had flown the airplane on several previous flights and stated that it had 'performed flawlessly.' The pilot and passenger flew a 1 hour flight and returned to the departure airport. The airplane was on the ground for about 30 minutes and had a radio antenna repaired. The engine was started by the pilot to check the radio on the ground, and then shut down. The pilot then restarted the engine with one pull of the propeller and taxied out for takeoff. After takeoff, about 200 feet above the ground, the engine lost power and the pilot began a steep 180 degree turn. The airplane then stalled and spun into the ground, about 1,000 feet from the departure end of the runway. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact failures of the airframe or engine. The fuel selector valve, and control assembly in the cockpit, were found in the OFF position. When air was applied to one end of the fuel selector in the OFF position, a flow of air could be felt at the other end. A similar airplane was started with the fuel selector OFF, and the engine ran for 1 minute and 46 seconds before fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to takeoff with the fuel selector in the full on position, which resulted in fuel starvation. Also causal was the pilot's improper in-flight decision to attempt a 180 degree turn back to the runway, which resulted in the inadvertent stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97FA159
- Event ID
- 20001208X08715
- Case number
- NYC97FA159
- 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: 2fc10f02b722ff0ba3d854f336936030423abb2012e69b8b8cd99155493efc7e; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:52:26.162Z.