NYC02LA048 · Piper PA-28
Piper PA-28 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Cape Cod Gateway Airport (HYA) to Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA048
- 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
- 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
- N6315R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape Cod Gateway Airport (HYA), Hyannis, MATo Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK), Nantucket, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a VFR flight. The departure, climb, and en route portions were "uneventful." Once in the terminal area, the pilot was cleared to land on runway 30, so he initiated a descent to 1,000 feet agl. Once on a right downwind, the pilot reduced engine power to 1,500 to 1,700 rpm. He set the mixture control to full rich, and selected the fuel pump and carburetor heat to "ON." On "base," the pilot noticed he was approximately 200 feet low. He increased power to maintain altitude, but the engine did not respond. The pilot checked the mixture control, fuel selector, fuel pump switch, and magneto switches, but did not identify any configuration problems. He then selected the carburetor heat to "OFF" and set the throttle to full open. The engine still did not respond. Unable to make the airport, the pilot identified an open field, and selected full flaps. The airplane touched down, bounced once, touch down again, and then struck a tree with the left wing before coming to a stop. An engine run was performed after the accident. During the run, the engine ran "normally," but idled between 450 and 500 rpm, instead of the recommended 750 rpm. With carburetor heat "ON" and the throttle in the idle position, the engine "almost quit." In addition, weather conditions at the accident site were conducive for serious icing with glide power.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA048
- Event ID
- 20020204X00167
- Case number
- NYC02LA048
- 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: 6f3eec92a38755610c03653afb7e1eeef621ebebc707021d70b64953238dd1f2; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:12:12.572Z.