NYC04FA077 · Piper PA-28-181
Capitol Airlines Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Erie International Tom Ridge Field (ERI) to Waterbury Oxford Airport (OXC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04FA077
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N4166P
- Operator
- Capitol Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Erie International Tom Ridge Field (ERI), Erie, PATo Waterbury Oxford Airport (OXC), Oxford, CT
- 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
- Partial 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
- Stall
- 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 › Evasive maneuver, performed
- 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
About 20 minutes into the night cross-country flight, the pilot reported a rough-running engine to air traffic control. The pilot requested to return to the departure airport and was instructed by ATC to "reverse course, report airport in sight." No further pertinent transmissions were received from the pilot. A witness near the accident site reported observing the airplane approach the field at a very high speed. The airplane was heading north at a height of about 800 feet, then turned to the left, and descended from view. A second witness observed the airplane flying in a northerly direction. The airplane made a left turn and descended from view. The witness added that the airplanes engine was "spitting and sputtering like it was stalling or running out of gas." The wreckage was located in a snow covered farm field, next to a row of six large hardwood trees, about 25 miles southeast of the departure airport. Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane impacted the ground in front of the trees, in a nose-low, left-wing-low attitude. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the propeller blades were twisted, bent aft, and displayed leading edge nicks and chordwise scratches. Examination of the cockpit area revealed that the tachometer gauge displayed a reading of 3,000 rpm. The throttle and mixture control levers in the cockpit were both in the full forward position, and the carburetor heat lever was observed in the "ON" position. A review of a FAA carburetor icing probability chart placed the reported temperature and dew point in the "icing at glide and cruise power" area of the chart. Examination of the engine did not reveal any abnormalities. The reported weather at the departure airport included 10 statute miles of visibility and clear skies. The temperature was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and a dew point of 25 degrees Fahrenheit. The pilot accumulated about 233 hours of total flight experience, 2.6 hours of which were in make and model.
Probable cause
The loss of partial engine power for undetermined reasons, and the pilot's lost of control after performing an evasive maneuver to avoid trees during a forced landing at night. Factors related to the accident were a rough running engine and the pilot's inability to see the trees due to the nighttime conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04FA077
- Event ID
- 20040308X00295
- Case number
- NYC04FA077
- 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 2004-02-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 65cbda57cdb0cddd44426408a8dd0af97efa5ed7d3cc8a33fbb1d42a3355f763; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:32:13.400Z.