FTW03LA232 · Piper PA-28-151
King Flight Service Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Jack Brooks Regional Airport (BPT) to Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA232
- 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-28-151
- 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
- N43376
- Operator
- King Flight Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jack Brooks Regional Airport (BPT), Beaumont, TXTo Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ), Pearland, TX
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff initial climb, the pilot reported the "engine was running rough" and the pilot elected to execute a precautionary landing to a field near the airport. The 515-hour pilot stated that during landing, he "banked [the airplane] sharply to the left to avoid power lines." Subsequently, the left wing left wing impacted the ground and airplane came to rest upright, approximately one mile south of runway 34. Examination of the engine revealed the bottom sparkplugs contained fuel and both magnetos produced spark on all posts. Continuity was established throughout the engine, and thumb compression was noted on all four cylinders. The reason for the loss of engine power was not determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA232
- Event ID
- 20031001X01634
- Case number
- FTW03LA232
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-09-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c028d6a987103751ee5946d34e933d49fa6fdc2ff8cb82ce24bf15e7c9d65f25; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:21:30.414Z.