NYC99LA040 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Mid Atlantic Soaring Center Airport (W73) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA040
- 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-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N82096
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Atlantic Soaring Center Airport (W73)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
- 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
- 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, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning to land after releasing a glider. Two miles from the airport, the pilot established the airplane on final, selected flaps down, and noticed that the left fuel tank was 'half full' and the right fuel tank was a 'little less' then half full. The pilot repositioned the fuel selector to the left tank, and 1 minute later and 1,000 feet above the ground, the engine experienced a loss of power. After unsuccessfully attempting a restart, the pilot reselected the right fuel tank, pulled the carburetor heat, pumped the throttle, and attempted another start. When the engine did not respond, the pilot completed the forced landing, and the airplane was substantially damaged during rollout. After the accident the engine idled smoothly. The fuel selector was switched between left tank, right tank, and off. The engine stopped only when close to the off detent. According to the FAA publication, 'Tips On Winter Flying,' the accident conditions bordered between serious icing with glide power, and serious icing with cruise or climb power. In addition, the publication stated that, 'Carburetor heat should be used whenever atmospheric conditions indicate icing is a possibility and the engine is being operated at 75 percent power and below.'
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly use carburetor heat which resulted in carburetor ice and loss of engine power. Contributing factor were trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA040
- Event ID
- 20001211X11625
- Case number
- NYC99LA040
- 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: b460d97b296a4816505513e7a8a19af2b23f5291e94883297b6bfe2d0f65f8f4; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:07:50.243Z.