CHI99LA240 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Butler Memorial Airport (BUM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA240
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N9653J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Butler Memorial Airport (BUM)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
- Initial climb
- 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)
- 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 › Clearance, not possible
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he had just taken off and was approximately 100-150 feet above the ground, when the airplane's engine lost power, but did not stop. The pilot leveled off to see if he could land on the remaining runway. When he lowered the nose of the airplane, the engine began developing power again. The pilot elected to turn left into the traffic pattern. As the airplane turned onto downwind leg, the engine 'gave out again'. The pilot turned the airplane toward the runway and set up for a forced landing to an adjacent field. While descending, the pilot noticed rising terrain in front of him. To avoid stalling the airplane, the pilot said he turned 45 degrees toward the runway to avoid the rise. The pilot then noticed a barb-wire fence in front of him. The pilot said that the terrain beneath him was uneven and rough. The pilot said, 'I managed to keep the airplane flying until I got caught in the fence.' Each wing struck a fence post. The airplane turned around and stopped approximately 80-100 feet beyond the fence. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reason, and the pilot's inability to maintain clearance from the fence during the forced landing. Factors relating to this accident were the rising terrain, the rough/uneven terrain, and the fence posts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA240
- Event ID
- 20001212X19199
- Case number
- CHI99LA240
- 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: 66f4c7ca1e377e73d6c1310b7a3ba4747e0dfd99ccdae8ab54a1aabc41ffe038; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:29:23.200Z.