DEN06LA007 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD) to LXT · Lee Summit, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06LA007
- 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-22-150
- 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
- N8875D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD), New Century, KSTo LXT · Lee Summit, KS
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Dual student › Carburetor heat, improper use of
- Dual student › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After making a touch-and-go landing and climbing to approximately 200 feet, the engine "sputtered and quit." The student relinquished airplane control to the instructor, who performed a forced landing on a grassy area near the runway. During the ground roll, the airplane's left main landing gear struck an unlit metal box, folding it up against the fuselage. The airplane spun around, twisting the nose gear, and came to rest just south of the runway and next to a taxiway. Later perfunctory tests failed to "identify a cause" as to why the engine lost power. At the time of the accident, the temperature was 14 degrees C. (57 degrees F.), and the dew point was 12 degrees C. (54 degrees F.), respectively. According to the Carburetor Icing Probability Chart, these conditions were conducive to serious carburetor icing conditions at cruise and glide power settings. According to the Piper Aircraft Corporation and Textron-Lycoming, since 1989 they have required the use of carburetor heat prior to the reduction of power and throughout the landing, or until the landing is assured.
Probable cause
loss of engine power due to the pilot's improper use of carbuetor heat and his improper inflight planning/decision. Contributing factors were the inadequate supervision of the student by the flight instructor, conditions conducive to carburetor ice, dark night light conditions, and an unlit taxiway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06LA007
- Event ID
- 20051017X01660
- Case number
- DEN06LA007
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-10-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 560d038f36767b5e2c7bbdea380747e22bea462e28f93639791fbbb0c4627207; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:18:08.272Z.