DFW06CA022 · Piper PA38
Piper PA38 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Decatur Municipal Airport (LUD) to Hale County Airport (PVW)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA022
- 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 PA38
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA38
- 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
- N2593P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Decatur Municipal Airport (LUD), Decatur, TXTo Hale County Airport (PVW), Plainview, TX
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- 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 engine started to run rough about a minute after takeoff. The 475-hour student pilot reported a 500 RPM drop. The pilot applied carburetor heat and switched fuel tanks, but neither resulted in an increase in engine power. The pilot leveled-off at approximately 600 feet above the ground. About 3 or 4 minutes into the flight, a severe engine vibration developed and the pilot elected to shut-down the engine and attempted to land in a pasture approximately two miles from the airport. During the landing roll the airplane impacted a fence resulting in structural damage to the wings and additional damage to the propeller. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector that traveled to the accident site noted the airplane's engine chip detector light was illuminated and that the propeller was hard to pull through. The reason for the loss or engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA022
- Event ID
- 20051215X01976
- Case number
- DFW06CA022
- 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: 513b5e6147bd17859caa879b38542b198365620623715fb041503fecb8f8b121; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:15:29.757Z.