ANC06LA021 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Winslow Lindbergh Regional Airport (KINW) to Palm Springs International Airport (KPSP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06LA021
- 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-32R-300
- 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
- N8322C
- Operator
- Ronald D. Craig · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winslow Lindbergh Regional Airport (KINW), Winslow, AZTo Palm Springs International Airport (KPSP), Palm Springs, 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Foreign material/substance
- Fuel system, fuel flow divider/distributor › Blocked(partial)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated private pilot, with one passenger, was on a cross-country personal flight under Title 14, CFR Part 91. Just after takeoff, when the airplane was about 200 feet above the ground, the engine began to run rough and lose power. Emergency procedures did not restore power, and the airplane collided with a barbwire fence during an off-airport forced landing, sustaining substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage. The airplane was equipped with a recently installed factory-remanufactured Textron Lycoming IO-540 engine. Postaccident investigation revealed a grayish, soft, rubbery material partially blocking the ports of the fuel flow divider's metering pin. There was no debris discovered in the interior of the fuel injector servo, or in the fuel injector's inlet screen. According to a representative of Textron Lycoming, fuel system components on factory-remanufactured engines are shipped separately. It is the responsibility of the receiving maintenance technician to install the fuel system components on the engine, and ensure that no debris enters the fuel line or fuel flow divider during the installation process. A Safety Board senior metallurgist who examined the gray foreign material was unable to identify the source, but reported it consisted of agglomerations of smaller particles, consistent with a Teflon-like material. The Safety Board metallurgist also reported that the rubbery material was not consistent with fuel supply line material, and no additional debris was found inside the fuel line or within the fuel injector servo.
Probable cause
The presence of a foreign material/substance in the fuel system, which partially blocked the fuel flow divider, and resulted in a loss of engine power during takeoff-initial climb, and an emergency landing. A factor associated with the accident was unsuitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA021
- Event ID
- 20060315X00305
- Case number
- ANC06LA021
- 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: d38b969064afcb0cad1b47b792ba641882f8d24763f9038f783ab480f884aa73; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:49:13.812Z.