CHI04CA118 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Hartford Municipal Airport (HXF) to Hartford Municipal Airport (HXF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA118
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N2368M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartford Municipal Airport (HXF), Hartford, WITo Hartford Municipal Airport (HXF), Hartford, WI
- 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
The airplane was damaged during a forced landing, following a loss of engine power during initial climb. The pilot reported there were no anomalies with the operation of either magneto and there was no indication of carburetor ice accumulation during the pretakeoff engine tests. The pilot stated he experienced an uneventful takeoff roll and climb out until approximately 350 feet above ground level, at which time the engine lost power. The pilot, who was seated in the rear seat, instructed the pilot-rated passenger to switch fuel tanks, check the position of the magneto switch, and to select carburetor heat on. The pilot stated there was no change in the engine operation and he performed a forced landing into an open field. The main landing gear collapsed when it encountered the soft terrain condition. Subsequent to the accident, two gallons of fuel were recovered from the fuel system and the samples did not contain water or particulate contamination. The damaged propeller was replaced with a serviceable propeller so that an engine operational test could be accomplished. The engine started and idled between 550 and 600 rpm. The engine was then accelerated to 3,350 rpm and no anomalies were noted during the test.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A factor to the accident was the soft terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA118
- Event ID
- 20040524X00641
- Case number
- CHI04CA118
- 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: 2fd79bee196d25b272eab9cfa17f8f83d54e7997ca87bf141a2bf67f0d3c95c0; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:34:41.443Z.