CHI05FA024 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05FA024
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N63887
- Operator
- Willie L. Shaw · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MITo not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Wire, transmission; Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Propeller feathering, not 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
The multi-engine airplane collided with power lines, a house, a tree, and a fence following a loss of engine power during initial takeoff climb. A second house sustained fire and impact damage from flying debris. The pilot reported all engine indications were normal until after takeoff. The pilot reported he estimated being about 50 feet above ground level when he noticed a "split" in the manifold pressure and rpm indicating a loss of power on the left engine. He stated he turned to the south (left) to avoid obstacles and attempted to land in a field. A pilot-rated passenger reported that after takeoff, the pilot "seemed to be having problems gaining and maintaining altitude." She reported that she thought the pilot was returning to the airport when they began to lose altitude and that she heard the stall warning horn come on twice during the flight. She stated she was busy making call-outs and looking at the airspeed, and therefore did not know which engine had lost power or if the propeller had been feathered. Both engines had sustained heat and impact damage. Post accident inspection of the engines failed to reveal any failure/malfunction which would have resulted in the loss of engine power. Detailed inspection of the left engine propeller revealed the propeller had not been feathered prior to impact. The airplane information manual states that once the "... faulty engine is identified and its power loss verified, its propeller should be feathered."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to feather the propeller and to maintain control of the airplane following the loss of engine power which resulted from undetermined reasons. Factors associated with the accident were the power lines and the house that the airplane contacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05FA024
- Event ID
- 20041112X01809
- Case number
- CHI05FA024
- 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: 976160bb7d77a1651d333743a2f1538de76b119ea7cc443ae15827d692254fb3; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:11:08.606Z.