FTW98LA321 · Piper PA-23
Piper PA-23 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From 1F9 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA321
- 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-23
- 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
- N3154P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1F9To 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 pattern turn to base
- 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
- 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(cfi) › Emergency procedure, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instructional flight, the twin engine airplane undershot the runway following a loss of right engine power. With the private pilot receiving instruction at the controls, the airplane took off and remained in the traffic pattern. As the turn to base leg was made, the airplane 'suddenly' began loosing altitude, and the flight instructor took control of the airplane. The instructor added full power, feathered the right engine and retracted the flaps. However, the airplane impacted trees short of the runway. The operator stated that monitoring of the engine gauges might have prevented the accident by alerting the pilots to the loss of engine power 'at an earlier stage.' The reason for the loss of right engine power has not been determined.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delay in recognizing and responding to the loss of right engine power which resulted in the airplane landing short of the runway. A factor was the loss of right engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA321
- Event ID
- 20001211X10586
- Case number
- FTW98LA321
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-07-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 790005757bc06db12a1f3d666e5383794807d951b7c7a645e5cb74a364d997d7; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:22:55.999Z.