DEN04LA110 · American AA-1
American AA-1 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From 7V6 · Guernsey, WY to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA110
- 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
American AA-1
- Aircraft type
- American AA-1
- 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
- N5667L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7V6 · Guernsey, WYTo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he just departed and was climbing. The pilot stated that the "engine started sputtering, and the tachometer went to 2200 rpm" and he was unable to maintain altitude. The pilot elected to land straight ahead due to "flatter" terrain. The airplane impacted a barbed wire fence and sage brush during the forced landing, causing substantial damage. The aviation routine weather report (METAR) reported the temperature as 77 degrees Fahrenheit (F) and the dewpoint was 54 degrees F. According to the Carburetor Icing Chart, these conditions are conducive for "serious icing at glide power." The contents of the airplane were weighed to calculate a weight and balance. The total weight of the airplane was calculated to be 1,580 pounds and the center of gravity was calculated to be 3 inches aft the most aft center of gravity limit.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate use of carburetor heat which resulted in the formation of carburetor ice and loss of engine power. Factors contributing to the accident were weather conditions conducive for carburetor icing, and a lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA110
- Event ID
- 20040727X01070
- Case number
- DEN04LA110
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 52d73ae741eabd7d33080767524a2009e0c2840822a0aed351ff3e46a00be093; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:14:50.332Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states the airplane "impacted a barbed wire fence and sage brush during the forced landing, causing substantial damage"; no fire or destruction is described.