NYC03LA146 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Linden Airport (LDJ) to Princeton Airport (39N)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA146
- 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
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N314TM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Linden Airport (LDJ), Linden, NJTo Princeton Airport (39N), Princeton, NJ
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Mixture control, linkage › Not secured
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to ferry the airplane to a maintenance facility to have the carburetor examined. During the takeoff climb, about 300 feet above the ground, the engine began to "run rough" for about 10 seconds, then lost total power. The pilot performed a forced landing to the only grass area in the vicinity, and during the landing, the airplane impacted a gas pipeline. Examination of the engine revealed that the mixture control wire was not secured to the mixture control arm pivot bolt. A review of the maintenance records revealed the carburetor was replaced five days prior to the accident, with the entry stating, "..set idle speed and mixture to specs."
Probable cause
The mechanic's improper installation of the carburetor, and his failure to secure the mixture control wire to the mixture control arm pivot bolt.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA146
- Event ID
- 20030717X01121
- Case number
- NYC03LA146
- 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: 6985a54cd0361f31fbce0f31e9f7e56e39da3df8fe197c5faae77685bd6b6914; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:25:56.082Z.