NYC05FA105 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Capital City Airport (CXY) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05FA105
- 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
- 3 · 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-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N235G
- Operator
- Gregory Treadway
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Capital City Airport (CXY), Harrisburg, PATo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CT
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- 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 airplane lost engine power and impacted a house shortly after takeoff and was destroyed. The pilot stated that he added fuel to the wingtip fuel tanks, and oil to the engine. He performed a preflight inspection of the airplane, which included sampling fuel from the wingtip fuel tanks. No anomalies were noted during taxi or engine run-up; and the airplane departed on a 5,001-foot-long, 150-foot-wide, asphalt runway. During the takeoff roll, the airplane used more runway than usual, and did not seem to have full engine power at rotation. Additionally, several witnesses at the airport and accident site recalled hearing interruptions in engine noise as the airplane descended into a mobile home community. Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions; however, the carburetor, mechanical fuel pump, electric fuel pump, magnetos, and propeller governor could not be tested due to post-impact fire damage. The fuel selector was found set to the left wingtip tank, which was fueled prior to takeoff. Testing of the fueling truck did not reveal any evidence of water or contamination. Review of aircraft performance charts revealed that the airplane should have cleared a 50-foot-obstacle, and been climbing about 600 feet per minute, after an approximate 2,000-foot takeoff roll.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a forced landing after takeoff and subsequent collision with a residence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05FA105
- Event ID
- 20050628X00884
- Case number
- NYC05FA105
- 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: 0eeb0f9e42a2f760e9f569e0d31a029cc6b919a887cf5acd2c043fcf51c66183; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:00:11.818Z.