ATL00LA002 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lake Wales Municipal Airport (X07) to Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL00LA002
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N616FT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Wales Municipal Airport (X07), FLTo Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB), Melbourne, FL
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After performing a touch and go landing, the pilot initiated a turn toward the north and leveled off in cruise flight at 2,500 ft. msl. Shortly thereafter, the engine began running rough. He attempted to divert to a private airstrip and failed to follow the emergency procedures checklist. Lacking sufficient altitude to glide to the airstrip, he decided land on an adjacent highway. During the landing rollout, the right wing of the airplane struck a flag pole, a road information sign, and the side of a tractor trailer. An examination of the engine was conducted by an FAA inspector. The engine was started and ran at all power settings, and no mechanical discrepancies were found. According to reported weather conditions, the temperature and dew point were 77 and 61 degrees F., respectively. Conditions at the time were favorable for the formation of carburetor icing.
Probable cause
The carburetor icing conditions that were present. Factors were the failure of the pilot to follow the emergency procedures checklist, and the objects that included a flag pole, a road sign and a tractor trailer vehicle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL00LA002
- Event ID
- 20001212X19904
- Case number
- ATL00LA002
- 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: c7019079b3fdad72bbd263fe3fd3b1d71e58ae549fdb3207e41ebfee139b5eff; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:49:45.624Z.