DEN06LA045 · Piper PA-32RT-300T
Piper PA-32RT-300T · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK) to Johnson County Executive Airport (OJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06LA045
- 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-32RT-300T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N7824T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK), Manhattan, KSTo Johnson County Executive Airport (OJC), Olathe, 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
- Ignition system, magneto grounding lead (p-lead) › Shorted
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, not attained
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 said "the engine began to surge in power slightly as the airplane was rotated for liftoff from runway 03. During climbout, he notified the tower of a "possible engine problem," and the engine continued surging. As the pilot executed a slow left turn towards runway 13, the engine started losing power. He managed to land on runway 13 near the intersection with runway 03-21. The airplane was not aligned with the runway centerline, and went off the side of the runway. The left wing struck an elevated runway marker and taxiway lights. Both wing spars were damaged and the left wing was twisted down. An FAA airworthiness inspector examined the airplane and engine and reported finding an exposed left magneto "P" lead touching the connector shell. This could "cause an intermittent grounding of the left magneto," and result in the "fuel control[er] hunting to compensate [and] producing an engine power surge."
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the intermittent grounding of the left magneto "P" lead, causing the fuel controller to search and the engine to surge then lose power, and the pilot's failure to attain proper runway alignment. Contributing factors were the runway sign and taxiway lights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06LA045
- Event ID
- 20060308X00276
- Case number
- DEN06LA045
- 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: 2afa878c7b3327f4df858a866a33ecc3ad5fc0a427be5fabb9ce35af9b9a65db; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:05:31.523Z.