CHI01LA184 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Offutt Air Force Base (OFF) to Plattsmouth Municipal Airport (PMV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA184
- 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-32R-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N5659V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Offutt Air Force Base (OFF), OFFUTT AFB, NETo Plattsmouth Municipal Airport (PMV), Plattsmouth, NE
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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(cfi) › Stall/mush, inadvertent
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was flying a practice NDB approach to runway 34. The instructor said they began descending during the procedure turn. They rolled out on the inbound heading of 354 degrees. The instructor pilot said, "I called Omaha approach and they approved a switch to Plattsmouth advisory." While he changed radio frequencies, the student pilot descended to the minimum descent altitude of 1,820 feet mean sea level. At 7 DME the instructor made the radio call to Plattsmouth advisory. The student pilot performed his pre-landing checklist at 5 DME. The gear came down, and the student pilot told the instructor pilot that he turned on the boost pump and switched tanks. The instructor pilot said he did not actually see him do this, but looked over and saw the fuel pump on and the fuel selector switched over to the left tank. The engine instruments all looked normal. At 1.8 DME, the instructor pilot said the manifold pressure and RPMs dropped, and the airplane nosed down. The instructor pilot pushed the control levers full forward and told the student pilot to run the emergency checklist. "...our speed was still only about 80 and it was obvious we were not going to make the runway. We picked up a little speed, but even best glide wouldn't get us to the runway - we were too low for that. The instructor pilot said he looked for the best possible landing site straight ahead between us and the runway. The instructor pilot moved the throttle up and down twice. He said that it seemed very loose. There was no response from the engine. The engine sounded like it was still running. The instructor pilot said they kept the flaps up so they could stretch the glide to clear a tree line. On the other side of the tree line they saw a fence with large fence posts in their path. "We both got on the controls and pulled us over the fence. On the other side the terrain angled up. We flared, the stall warning sounded, the mains hit the ground and then it seemed like the nose wheel hit hard." An examination of the airplane at the accident site revealed no anomalies. The engine was examined 8 days later and showed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons during the approach and the inadvertent stall that occurred during the forced landing. Factors relating to this accident were the low airspeed, the uphill terrain, and the fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA184
- Event ID
- 20010627X01264
- Case number
- CHI01LA184
- 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: a9d6950d534b5ce070ec851ec97c29f4690a53ff6f73880b8f956571b2800543; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:55:26.719Z.