NYC84FNE03 · Piper J4A
Piper J4A · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Orange Municipal Airport (ORE)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC84FNE03
- 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
- 1 · 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 J4A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J4
- 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
- N33290
- Operator
- Steven R. Barrieau · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MA
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Gardner, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING CLIMBOUT, PLT NOTED SLIGHT PWR LOSS, APPLIED CARB HEAT & ENG REGAINED PWR. ON REMOVAL OF CARB HEAT, PWR LOSS (APRX 200 RPM) AGAIN OCCURRED. APPLICATION OF CARB HEAT AGAIN RESORTED PWR BUT PLT ELECTED TO TURN BACK TO FIELD AND LAND. DURING TURN, PLT BELIEVES A WIND GUST CAUSED THE LEFT WING TO DROP. PLT STATED TO WITNESS HE HAD FULL BACK STICK AND FULL AILERON CONTROL INPUTS BUT ACFT DID NOT RECOVER FROM LEFT WING DOWN, NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE BEFORE GROUND IMPACT. TEMP 85 DEGS, DEW POINT 65 DEGS, DENSITY ALT 3,000 FT. AUTOMOTIVE FUEL WAS BEING USED. ACFT WAS NEAR GROSS WEIGHT. ALT AT PWR LOSS WAS 200 FT AGL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC84FNE03
- Event ID
- 20001214X40467
- Case number
- NYC84FNE03
- 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: 62745d66aafeb44574aec016861adfa0b9170cefc856faa5d3e5a62a756d5b28; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:26:36.489Z.