NYC00LA217 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From N53 to 22B · BURLINGTON, CT
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA217
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N5731U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N53To 22B · BURLINGTON, CT
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot taxied onto the runway and advanced the throttle. The engine responded, and rpm stabilized about 300 less than maximum. During the first takeoff attempt, the airplane was nose high, slow, and flying in ground effect. The pilot cut power and landed. The pilot then taxied for a second attempt. He advanced throttle for takeoff and when the airplane was about 1/3 of the way down the runway, it was nose high, slow, and flying in ground effect. About 2/3 of the way down the runway, it had reached an altitude of 10-15 feet. At this point, the airplane was still nose-high, slow, and had developed a pitch oscillation. The airplane continued past the runway, and impacted the ground. According to the pilot, during both takeoff attempts, the engine ran smoothly, but only developed 2,400 RPM. Takeoff engine RPM was listed to be 2,700.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to takeoff with only partial engine power available.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA217
- Event ID
- 20001212X21831
- Case number
- NYC00LA217
- 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: 490b6335e4791596eabcb6cb1b7cfc502680af5fa45655a2108ceece2aef54c7; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:07:55.893Z.