LAX99LA259 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Buchanan Field (CCR) to Hayward Executive Airport (HWD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA259
- 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
- N5539W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, CATo Hayward Executive Airport (HWD)
- 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 · IFR final 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
- Total 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
- Stall/mush
- 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, not selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a left turn to final approach after descending through an overcast layer, the engine quit about 0.5 miles out from the runway and at 500 feet msl. The pilot switched from the right to the left tank, applied carburetor heat, richened the mixture, advanced the throttle, checked the magneto switch position, and attempted to restart the engine. He did not report turning on his auxiliary electric fuel pump. Unable to restart the engine, he declared an engine-out emergency and made an approach to a parking lot, which terminated with a hard landing. An FAA inspector reported that the right tank was filled nearly to the tab while the left tank contained approximately 5 gallons. The pilot said he had been on the right tank for both legs of the flight. He said he switched to the left tank as he was turning final. Fueling records show the airplane had been topped off earlier that morning and had been flown 2 hours since then. The manufacturer recommends that the auxiliary electric fuel pump be on for all takeoffs and landings and when switching tanks. The second item on the 'Engine Power Loss In Flight' checklist is 'Electric Fuel Pump - On.' The pilot did not report applying carburetor heat until after the power loss occurred. The temperature was 59 degrees and the dew point was 54 degrees Fahrenheit. According to the carburetor icing probability chart, the conditions were conducive for serious icing at either cruise or climb power.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat to prevent the formation of carburetor ice while operating in IFR conditions which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA259
- Event ID
- 20001212X19308
- Case number
- LAX99LA259
- 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: 4f0526885e785cd5438beabf03e63b752a5ba3680e899969989f04e57223f645; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:23:02.272Z.