ANC05FA039 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Twelve Oaks Airport (5FL7) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05FA039
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N444NM
- Operator
- Richard V. Mailloux · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Twelve Oaks Airport (5FL7), Hernando, FLTo 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
- En route · climb to 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- 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
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Disconnected
- Unknown › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot, with his adult son aboard, departed on a local area flight, with a return to the private fly-in community. After the initial climb, the pilot attempted to retard the throttle to a cruise power setting, but was unable to control the airplane's engine rpm with the throttle, and the engine rpm remained at takeoff power. He subsequently elected to return to the departure airport for an emergency landing. The airplane touched down with the engine still producing takeoff power, and the pilot decided to abort the landing. As the airplane began to climb, the engine rpm began to decrease and lose power, and the pilot selected an emergency landing area that contained 75-foot tall trees. The airplane collided with the trees, and sustained extensive damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage. A postimpact fire ensued, with both the pilot and passenger trapped inside of the burning fuselage. The pilot's son was able to free the pilot before the airplane was consumed by fire. A postaccident engine examination revealed that the bolt that connects the throttle linkage to the fuel control arm was missing, and the throttle linkage was disconnected. According to an FAA airworthiness inspector who reviewed the accident airplane's maintenance logbooks, there was no entry in the logbook indicating that any maintenance or repairs had been conducted on the throttle linkage to the fuel control arm.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the bolt that connects the throttle linkage to the fuel control arm by an unknown maintenance person, which resulted in a loss of the bolt, a loss of engine rpm control, and subsequent forced landing and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05FA039
- Event ID
- 20050310X00289
- Case number
- ANC05FA039
- 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: df39ae4b3a1dd0a32c831581c870a3802e671c97e6ef77fb96175fd5ce71c1f7; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:09:30.889Z.