MIA01LA125 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power during takeoff
From IGX · Chapel Hill, NC to Raleigh Regional Airport at Person County (TDF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA125
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N118AW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From IGX · Chapel Hill, NCTo Raleigh Regional Airport at Person County (TDF), Person County, NC
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, all pretakeoff checks were conducted by the instrument student, and his observation was that all preflight walk-around, radio, navigational, and engine checks were normal. Engine operation was normal, even characterized as "smooth" for initial power application and rotation, however, at about 200 to 300 feet agl, while crossing the departure end of the runway, the engine "burped" and regained power. About the time both pilots decided to return for a landing, the engine quit completely. The instructor took control of the aircraft, and they completed the emergency checklist for engine failure on takeoff, including switching fuel selector to the other, (left) tank, but power was not regained and a landing in the trees was unavoidable. Both pilots are adamant about the fuel selector being in the right tank detent at the start of the takeoff roll. Enough fuel spillage existed at the wreckage site that the Chapel Hill Fire Department was called, therefore fuel exhaustion was not considered by the FAA inspectors. Atmospheric conditions were not conducive to formation of carburetor ice by reference to icing probability charts. Subsequent engine run at an engine repair station with FAA oversight, after making adjustments for minor impact damage, revealed a satisfactorily running engine from idle to takeoff power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons during takeoff, resulting in an inflight collision with trees during the subsequent emergency landing. A factor in the accident was the lack of suitable terrain to conduct an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA125
- Event ID
- 20010423X00797
- Case number
- MIA01LA125
- 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: 9fb137360d2c7c3add48d5f403d101739896051246b7fece82ad0cc49f96b9db; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:01:28.152Z.