LAX05LA163 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Santa Ynez Airport (IZA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA163
- 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
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N89671
- Operator
- Keegan Bailey
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Ynez Airport (IZA), Santa Ynez, CATo 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 · 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The engine lost power while the airplane was in cruise flight and the airplane collided with obstacles and rough terrain during a forced landing. During cruise flight at 5,500 feet, the pilot felt a vibration in the engine. The vibration seemed to go through the entire airframe. The pilot applied carburetor heat for approximately 20 seconds. He removed the carburetor heat because it did not seem to help the situation and the engine began sputtering. He pulled the power back and began descending, attempting to troubleshoot the problem. The condition worsened and the pilot attempted to climb the airplane but there was not enough power available. All of the engine gauges appeared "in the green" and the pilot could not recall the rpm reading. The pilot and passenger began searching for a place to land and crash-landed into a tree in a crevice in the mountain. The temperature/dew point spread at 4,000 and 5,000 feet mean sea level indicated that moderate carburetor icing conditions existed at cruise power, when compared to a carburetor icing chart. According to the pilot operating handbook for the Cessna 140, "The correct way to use carburetor heat is to first use full heat to remove any ice that is forming." Post accident examination of the engine and airframe did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions that would have resulted in a loss of power.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to properly use carburetor heat during conditions conducive to carburetor icing, which resulted in the loss of engine power. A factor in the accident was the unsuitable landing terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA163
- Event ID
- 20050513X00611
- Case number
- LAX05LA163
- 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: d1785f6cdbfea5411b035c5bc649b2e0d01c155fedd9d8f3c33688ba55d0c0ac; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:08:11.216Z.