NYC02LA077 · Piper J4A
Piper J4A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK) to Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA077
- 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 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
- N27838
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK), Cincinnati, OHTo Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK), OH
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, adjustment, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, while the airplane was climbing through an estimated 300 feet, the engine lost power. The pilot saw he had terrain obstructions straight ahead and to the right, and jet traffic on the ground to the left. He attempted to land between parallel runways, but approaching the touchdown area, saw there was unsuitable terrain in the form of bogs and ditches. The pilot then continued to turn another 90-120 degrees to the left. The airplane "ran out of airspeed," and the left wheel caught the side of the runway. The left main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane flipped over. This was the first flight after an annual inspection. During the inspection, the carburetor was replaced, and the carburetor float had also been changed. Post-accident examination revealed that the carburetor float was out of adjustment.
Probable cause
The maintenance technician's failure to properly adjust the carburetor float. Factors were the unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA077
- Event ID
- 20020412X00504
- Case number
- NYC02LA077
- 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: 529526153e867e41eac40314160b37294c4168840f0c3621a8c5f1a89867cd39; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:03:01.767Z.