SEA99LA130 · Piper PA-18A-150
Piper PA-18A-150 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From ROME, OR to Burns Municipal Airport (BNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA130
- 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-18A-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
- N3992P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ROME, ORTo Burns Municipal Airport (BNO), Burns, OR
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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 › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While maneuvering at approximately 100 feet agl, the pilot applied power to out-climb rising terrain. Just after he applied power, the engine started to run rough, and the pilot applied carburetor heat. The application of carburetor heat resulted in a further loss of power, so the pilot returned the carburetor heat to the off position. He then used a combination of on-off-on settings in an attempt to remedy the suspected carburetor icing. Because his actions did not result in the engine returning to full power, he elected to attempt an emergency landing in a nearby clearing. While on final approach to the clearing, and still approximately 20 feet agl, the aircraft stalled/mushed into the terrain. According to the DOT/FAA Carburetor Icing Probability Chart, carburetor icing could be expected at the temperature/dew point present at the accident site at the time of the subject event.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent stall/mush of the aircraft while attempting a forced landing due to partial power loss of the engine. Factors include carburetor icing conditions and the pilot's improper use of carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA130
- Event ID
- 20001212X19384
- Case number
- SEA99LA130
- 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: e96857846fbe8aa5acf4b0d6962b0f56debd7f251898dc303bc77c5b8c6a7e94; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:23:19.714Z.