ATL99LA031 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Suffolk Executive Airport (SFQ) to 6J4 · Crestview, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA031
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3350T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Suffolk Executive Airport (SFQ), Suffolk, VATo 6J4 · Crestview, FL
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Partial 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
- 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
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was enroute to Florida, and planned a refueling stop in South Carolina. During the descent from 8500 feet, the pilot experienced a loss of engine power. Attempts by the pilot to restore full engine power failed. So he selected a field for an emergency landing, and while on final approach to land, the engine regained full power. At that point, the pilot elected to go-around. During the climbout phase of the go-around maneuver, the airplane collided with trees on the departure end of the proposed landing site. According to the pilot, the collision with the trees separated the left main landing gear assembly, and the right wing sustained substantial structural damage. The pilot flew the airplane to Aiken, South Carolina and after touchdown on runway 24, the airplane skidded off the left side of the runway. During the engine loss of power, weather conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor ice. No mechanical problems with the airplane were reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO USE CARBURETOR HEAT PROPERLY. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE THE CARBURETOR ICING CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA031
- Event ID
- 20001211X11372
- Case number
- ATL99LA031
- 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: d220b5c1824430e65df3d56958f61952bf506a1c4428d58b22f856e5008fce61; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:16:50.063Z.