DEN06FA109 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB) to San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06FA109
- 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
- 1 · 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-24-180
- 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
- N5416P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, COTo San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS), Alamosa, CO
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness, located about two miles from the accident site, said he heard an approaching airplane. He said the engine was "sputtering, like it was missing." He did not see the airplane, but he did hear a loud "pop." He went to a clearing and saw a fire on the mountainside. He said the sky was overcast and the mountaintops were obscured. He estimated the point of impact to be 500 feet below the overcast. After the wreckage was recovered, the engine was disassembled and examined. No anomalies were noted. There was camshaft and crankshaft continuity, and all connecting rods were attached. The carburetor, which had separated from the engine, was examined. The bowl was empty, and the throttle valve was closed. Both the engine-driven and auxiliary fuel pumps were destroyed by fire. The Carburetor Icing Probability Chart was consulted. The temperature and dew point recorded at the nearest weather reporting station, 37 miles south of the accident site, were conducive to "serious icing at cruise power." The temperatures and dew points recorded at the point of departure and destination were conducive to "serious icing at glide power."
Probable cause
a non-mechanical partial loss of engine power due to carburetor ice, and the pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain. Contributing factors in this accident were weather conditions conducive to carburetor icing and the pilot inadvertently flying into instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06FA109
- Event ID
- 20060810X01142
- Case number
- DEN06FA109
- 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: 7a0997e798a40cb92beb7a5183c03a622e7297135743c87d892f4dcf0e6e3b6c; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:06:16.051Z.