LAX06LA044 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From La Cholla Airpark (57AZ) to Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport (LMT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA044
- 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-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7466P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Cholla Airpark (57AZ), Tucson, AZTo Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport (LMT), Klamath Falls, OR
- 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 (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
- Mixture control, cable › Separation
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
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 landed hard during a forced landing following a loss of engine power in cruise flight. After a normal departure the airplane climbed to about 4,800 feet mean sea level (msl). The pilot noticed an audible difference in the engine operation, as if it were making intermittent pauses. As he was flying back to the airpark the engine continued to operate abnormally and began to make severe "popping" sounds. Despite the pilot's efforts, the engine failed to respond to his troubleshooting attempts and subsequently lost power. The airplane touched down about 1/3 down the runway, contacting the surface hard. A post-accident inspection preformed by a Federal Aviation Administration certificated mechanic who also holds an Inspection Authorization (IA) revealed that the mixture cable had disconnected at the carburetor. Specifically, the mixture linkage was separated where the cable adjoins the mixture control arm. The pilot and mechanic opined that the separation of the linkage would decrease the fuel supply and alter the fuel/air ratio, resulting in a subsequent loss of power. The airplane had last undergone an annual inspection 44 flight hours prior to the accident; the cable was last inspected at that time. The pilot stated that due to the location of the mixture cable, the mechanic would have to remove the cable from the throttle arm to inspect it in its entirety. The airplane's service manual states that during every 100-hour inspection the mechanic should inspect the mixture cable for, "travel and operating condition."
Probable cause
the separation of the mixture cable at the carburetor control arm, which resulted in a loss of power, and maintenance personnel's inadequate inspection of the airplane during the last annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA044
- Event ID
- 20051206X01936
- Case number
- LAX06LA044
- 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 2005-11-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c46273c849618e4cbe93d4b714d71f90e7a833f135eeb80126404528a602c548; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:51:29.502Z.