DEN03LA123 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Centennial Airport (APA) to Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA123
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N4386G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MN
- 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
- Partial 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
- Directional control › Diminished
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was cleared for takeoff and was instructed to maintain runway heading. The pilot said he aborted the takeoff after lifting off "due to poor airplane performance" and "landed very hard." The left main tire blew out and the airplane departed the left side of the runway and struck a taxiway sign. The engine was later functionally tested. Manifold pressure was found to be "3 [inches] low at full takeoff power," and the engine was producing "approximately 95-97 [per cent] full power at the takeoff setting." An adjustment to the wastegate actuator raised the manifold pressure to the correct setting.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper flare which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing factors were the out-of-calibration waste gate actuator, a blown tire, and the airport sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA123
- Event ID
- 20030708X01040
- Case number
- DEN03LA123
- 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: 0c1b002c04dd6a1e9608b7abce096bd522dc4b3aa5ecc8dce48f97b25e971c7a; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:03:08.602Z.