Flight 179 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (PIA) to General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (PIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA097
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N54231
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (PIA)To General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (PIA)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Total 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said his left engine was overheating during a climb to cruise altitude at which time he determined that he left the cowl plugs in the engine's cowl opening. The pilot shut the engine down and returned to the airport. During the instrument approach the pilot attempted to extend the landing gear and flaps. While on a 1-mile final approach the tower advised the pilot to go- around because the landing gear wasn't fully extended. The pilot said the airplane was past mid-field before he applied power to go-around. He said the airplane continued to descend prior to entering a stall/mush. The airplane collided with a taxiway and slid onto a grass area. The on-scene investigation revealed no anomalies with the normal and emergency hydraulic systems. The CO2-operated emergency landing gear extension system was capable of functioning. It had not been used. The flaps were found in the full 'DOWN' position.
Probable cause
an improper preflight inspection of the airplane by the pilot and the inadvertant stall/mush which was encountered. A factor associated with this accident was the pilot's decision to continue to use the emergency hydraulic hand pump rather than the CO2 bottle to extend the landing gear which resulted in the landing gear not fully extending.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA097
- Event ID
- 20001211X09529
- Case number
- CHI98LA097
- 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: 9e533577fd8dcf3a825aa0dab1729fa489e1da89b58694ba0a8951297417d228; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:13:12.581Z.