CHI05CA193 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Plainwell Municipal Airport (61D) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05CA193
- 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-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N2654A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plainwell Municipal Airport (61D), Plainwell, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
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 sustained damage when it nosed over during a forced landing following a loss of engine power on a downwind approach. The pilot stated, "[The passenger] and I had installed the overhauled carburetor ... and ran up the engine to verify proper working condition. ... [The next day] we ran it up twice to double check - everything was operating properly. The 11:25 am take-off was smooth and the climb out was strong. We turned crosswind, then downwind [1,000 feet above ground level]. On the tailend of the downwind, I pulled the carburetor heat, then pulled more power back. Five seconds later, I went to put more power in but the engine was dead. ... Our descent rate exceeded our distance to the airport, so we headed for the closest field. It appeared to be a bean field, which would have been hard packed and flat. However, it was a potato field, which was soft, soaked from recent rain, and uniform with 1 1/2 to 2 foot deep ruts. The landing was fine until the nose gear hit and dug in. The plane flipped over onto its top and slid to a stop." An examination of wreckage revealed no pre-impact anomalies with the airframe, engine, or carburetor. The recorded local temperature was 28 degrees C and the dew point was 16 degrees C. The temperature and dew point were plotted on a Transport Canada Carburetor Icing chart and their intersection falls in the serious icing - descent power area of the chart.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power on downwind due to carburetor icing, and the unsuitable terrain the pilot encountered during the forced landing. A factor was the soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05CA193
- Event ID
- 20050810X01203
- Case number
- CHI05CA193
- 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: 44ec0537bd429d6ec712b16d3cde4fcd528d389f4a2c321cf42ca95bb61cdbb1; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:57:15.542Z.