DEN00LA038 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA038
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N128Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS), WYTo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, ID
- 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
- Total 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
- Terrain condition › None suitable
- Terrain condition › Rough/uneven
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated the cross-country flight on a VFR flight plan in IMC conditions. He picked up an IFR clearance following his departure. After approximately 15 minutes of flight, the pilot said he lost power to the right engine due to induction system icing. This was followed by a loss of power to the left engine. The pilot conducted an emergency, landing gear retracted, landing on rough uneven terrain. Weather conditions at the departure airport were 200 foot overcast skies and 1/2 mile visibility with snow. The wind was from 280 degrees at 17 knots with gusts to 23 knots, the altimeter was 29.86 Hg, and the temperature/dew point was 25 and 19 degrees Fahrenheit respectively.
Probable cause
A forced landing on rough, unsuitable terrain. Factors were: Inadequate preflight planning, flight into known adverse weather conditions containing snow, high gusting winds, low temperatures, and a total loss of power for non mechanical reasons due to induction system icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA038
- Event ID
- 20001212X20347
- Case number
- DEN00LA038
- 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: d1e3c0b52910a0c832a1761e4f557ca99d0b6380ce15196ed667c1cec1eb35f8; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:26:23.433Z.