ATL05CA162 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during takeoff
From Mac Crenshaw Memorial Airport (KPRN) to Huntington Beach, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA162
- 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N287RR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mac Crenshaw Memorial Airport (KPRN), Greenville, ALTo Huntington Beach, CA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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, injector › Contamination, other than water
- Pilot in command › Flight controls, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, continued
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Throttle/power control, 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 pilot was departing on a cross country flight to California when on the takeoff climb, the left engine lost power 50 feet above the ground. At this point the airplane veered left and the left wing struck the ground 200 feet left of runway centerline and rested 303 feet from the left edge of the runway surface. The engine failure during takeoff emergency procedures state "close both throttles immediately, land if airborne and stop straight ahead." Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed mud, water, and other unknown debris mixed was compacted in the servo of the left engine. Before the accident flight the pilot asked a mechanic to examine the left engine. The mechanic examined the engine and told the pilot that there was a defect with the fuel servo and it needed to be repaired. The pilot acknowledged the mechanics findings but elected to depart without repairing the fuel servo.
Probable cause
The loss of left engine power due to fuel system contamination and the pilot's failure to follow procedures and his improper use of the throttle and flight controls during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA162
- Event ID
- 20051011X01608
- Case number
- ATL05CA162
- 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: 54a618552102879fe71cba0c605548a1206004232a88eda3e34f4cda8d2cf5f1; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:03:19.682Z.