ATL98LA102 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Coastal Carolina Regional Airport (EWN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98LA102
- 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-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N1266C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coastal Carolina Regional Airport (EWN)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
- En route · 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Carburetor heat control, cable/push-pull rod › Failure, total
- Carburetor heat control, cable/push-pull rod › Worn
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Less than one hour into the flight, the engine developed a rough condition, and the pilot decided to apply carburetor heat. When he pulled the carburetor heat lever to apply heat, the inner cable pulled completely out, and he could not apply carburetor heat. Since the engine power condition continued to deteriorate, the pilot elected to return home. Unable to maintain altitude, and still less than a mile from the shore, the pilot was forced to ditched the airplane about 1500 feet from the shoreline. Examination of the carburetor heat cable assembly disclosed that the inner movable cable was worn to a point. The cable failed about eighteen inches from the attach point on the carburetor. The pilot reported that the failed section of the worn inner cable was positioned at a bend in the cable assembly. A review of weather data revealed that conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
The failure of the inner cable of the carburetor heat cable assembly that prevented the application of carburetor heat. Factors were conditions favorable for the formation of carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98LA102
- Event ID
- 20001211X10760
- Case number
- ATL98LA102
- 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: 46eef66f2f6b9443d4f70172280232f4f4160dac02492f64e52d0a2aefc2b76d; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:15:05.387Z.