NYC03LA012 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA012
- 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
- N40059
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM), Farmingdale, NJTo not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot finished a dual instruction and then received permission from his flight instructor to make a solo flight. The flight instructor reported that he told the student pilot to remain within 5 miles of the departure airport. The student pilot strayed further and at one point, when the flight instructor established radio contact with him, the student pilot reported that he did not know where he was. While descending from 3,500 feet to 2,000 feet , about 7 miles south east of the airport, he added carburetor heat. The engine started to run rough, and he turned the carburetor heat off, after which the engine lost power. The student pilot performed an off airport landing. The student pilot subsequently reported that did not leave the carburetor heat on long enough to dissipate the accumulated ice.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of carburetor heat which resulted in a failure to remove carburetor ice, and loss of engine power. A factor was the carburetor icing conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA012
- Event ID
- 20021112X05457
- Case number
- NYC03LA012
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2a6006e3bc53c81a7cd82038e1cd99e64e2c3122d9b15c667b2dc93c589962ad; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:33:28.701Z.