ATL04LA183 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG) to Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA183
- 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-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N5546Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG), San Juan, PRTo Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG), San Juan, PR
- 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
- Approach
- 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, not used
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot completed banner tow operations and made a left climbing turn. During the climb the airplane lost engine power. The pilot was unsuccessful in restoring the engine power. The pilot maneuvered the airplane to the right towards the approach end of runway 27. The airplane, on a 120-degree magnetic heading, landed across the runway surface, rolled into the grass and collided with a fence. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane prior to the accident. Examination of the airplane revealed the wings detached, the main landing gear collapsed and damage to the engine and propeller. The examination further showed that the fuel tanks were breached but more than 12 gallons of fuel was recovered from the left tank. The examination of the engine failed to disclose anomalies. The pilot did not report using carburetor heat during the flight. The weather conditions at the time of the accident were wind 360-degrees at 8 knots, visibility 10 miles, temperature 31-degrees Celsius and dewpoint 26-degrees Celsius. The review of the icing probability curves disclose conditions favorable for the formation of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat which resulted in carburetor ice and the subsequent loss of engine power. A factor was weather conditions favorable for carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA183
- Event ID
- 20050308X00280
- Case number
- ATL04LA183
- 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: f175ab0732f1f71d0381e80bfa98c2f997e96963c12ab03026ed9dc8540b9169; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:44:03.102Z.