NYC98LA051 · Piper J-3C-65
Piper J-3C-65 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Union Island International Airport (UNI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA051
- 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 J-3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J-3
- 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
- N1469N
- Operator
- John A. Swart · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Union Island International Airport (UNI)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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Carburetor heat, not removed
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing from a previous flight and refueling, the pilot of the accident flight sat in the rear seat as pilot-in-command (PIC); and the other occupant, who had been PIC on the previous flight, was in the front seat as a pilot-rated passenger (PAX). The pilot described the takeoff and climb as normal, and entered the traffic pattern for a touch-and-go landing. He applied carburetor heat at mid-field on downwind. According to the passenger, when the airplane was close to the runway, it started to drift to the right, and it swerved to the left immediately after touchdown. The airplane swerved back and forth a few times before the pilot added power to go around. The passenger stated the airplane did not climb at a normal rate, and the speed seemed extremely slow. The airplane impacted the tops of trees during the climb. Postaccident examination of the airplane did not revealed any abnormalities of the airframe or engine. The carburetor heat control was observed in the 'on' position. The pilot reported 228 hours of total flight experience, of which 18 were in make and model.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision and failure to turn off the carburetor heat during the go-around. Related factors were: the pilot's lack of experience in make and model, and the proximity of trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA051
- Event ID
- 20001208X09369
- Case number
- NYC98LA051
- 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: 208afce3a356d508137fe680ff69540d7c8ff4ad53e5be2533e626f72946bdfc; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:59:00.333Z.