NYC03LA041 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Dutchess County Airport (POU) to Dutchess County Airport (POU)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA041
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N5136L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dutchess County Airport (POU), Poughkeepsie, NYTo Dutchess County Airport (POU)
- 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 final
- 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
- Partial 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
With the outside air temperature approximately 12 degrees Fahrenheit and the dew point approximately -8 degrees Fahrenheit, the pilot departed for closed traffic. He turned final about 0.5 mile from the runway, and was a "little" higher than anticipated." He reduced throttle, and the airplane intercepted the glide path about 350 feet from the end of the runway. He then added throttle to maintain his descent angle, but engine power did not increase. He waited a couple of seconds, and added more throttle. Still power did not increase, so he added a "substantial" amount of throttle, and started to flare the airplane. The engine responded, but before the pilot could arrest the descent rate, the airplane touched down short of the runway. Examination of the engine and carburetor revealed no preimpact failures or malfunctions. Research has shown that when engine power is reduced to idle, the engine cools rapidly, and vaporization of fuel is less complete, which can slow engine response times, or cause a complete loss of engine power. Sudden throttle movements can aggravate this situation, and the pilot should try to keep the engine warm during glides by frequently opening the throttle.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate amount of engine power while maneuvering to land, which produced delayed engine response times. A facture in the accident was the cold day.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA041
- Event ID
- 20030203X00143
- Case number
- NYC03LA041
- 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: c8df3fe8e0320b6456695dbc5bdb14a5930f4a4191b5eb38c5d8472c804ad948; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:39:40.423Z.