CHI99LA246 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Reedsburg Municipal Airport (C35) to 47C · WI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA246
- 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-24-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N6316P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reedsburg Municipal Airport (C35), Reedsburg, WITo 47C · WI
- 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 downwind
- 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 › Planned approach, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had pulled the power back to 20 inches of manifold pressure for approximately two minutes to slow down so he could lower the landing gear. He pulled the carburetor heat on when he was abeam the runway numbers. The engine coughed and lost power, and he made an immediate turn to the runway. He checked that the fuel pump was on and he tried to pump the throttle, but it had no effect. He landed on the grass on the left side of the runway when he determined the airplane was going to land short of the runway. During the landing rollout, the airplane impacted the far side of a drainage ditch. The temperature and dew point spread of 80/70 degrees Fahrenheit put the airplane in the 'moderate icing-glide power' range according to the Aviation Safety Bureau Transport Canada guide for favorable icing conditions. When the airplane was inspected, the engine started and was run. No anomalies were noted.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper approach to landing. Factors included the carburetor icing, the delayed use of carburetor heat, the unsuitable terrain for landing, and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA246
- Event ID
- 20001212X19205
- Case number
- CHI99LA246
- 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: 2027f5bac6ffe74484dc1f422d1be3c035fe62bd65d93eeca205c422c5600b15; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:26:10.071Z.