CHI00LA235 · Piper PA-28-160
Piper PA-28-160 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Lake Geneva Aire Estates Airport (WI89)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA235
- 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-28-160
- 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
- N5293W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lake Geneva Aire Estates Airport (WI89), Lake Geneva, 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
- En route · climb to 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he had gotten airborne and was approximately 300 feet above the ground when "the aircraft engine had a sudden loss of power. I was already in a slight right hand turn, so I sharpened the turn, in an attempt to return to the runway. The attempt failed." An examination of the fuel system showed negligible fuel in the left main tank. The right main tank showed approximately 10 gallons of fuel. The fuel selector was on the right tank. Fuel was observed in the gascolator. During a post- crash examination, the engine was started and ran at idle power. Examination of the remaining airplane systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the fence during the forced landing attempt. Factors relating to the accident were the pilot's improper in-flight planning and decision to turn back toward the runway during the forced landing attempt, the airport fence, and the corn crop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA235
- Event ID
- 20001212X21665
- Case number
- CHI00LA235
- 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: 03df803bf15df06a7df81262ebc06f111f9af684fafa567425b06f9738d7788d; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:38:00.781Z.