LAX07LA108 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Portland Troutdale Airport (KTTD) to Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (KRWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA108
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7169Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Troutdale Airport (KTTD), Troutdale, ORTo Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (KRWL), Rawlings, WY
- 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
- Partial 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
- 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 airplane collided with the ground during a forced landing following a loss of power in one engine. The airplane was cruising at 15,000 feet, when the right engine lost power. The pilot's attempt to restart the engine was not successful. He feathered the propeller, and notified air traffic control (ATC) that he had an engine failure. ATC gave him vectors to the closest airport, which was approximately 22 miles away. The pilot positioned the right fuel selector to crossfeed, and attempted a second engine restart, which was successful, but it only ran for a few seconds. He was unable to maintain the airplane's altitude. As they passed through 7,100 feet (about 1,110 feet above ground level), he successfully restarted the engine. He pushed all the engine control levers forward, and the engine ran for about 30 seconds before it lost power. The right propeller had moved out of the feathered position, and the rate of descent increased. The pilot decided to land in a field just short of the airport. Fuel was visually identified in 3 of the 4 fuel tanks. Mechanical continuity of the right engine was confirmed. Subsequent examination of the fuel selectors, the right fuel boost pump, and right engine throttle body servo revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Probable cause
a loss of power in the right engine for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA108
- Event ID
- 20070320X00307
- Case number
- LAX07LA108
- 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 2007-03-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d2f36a6b52e61159af17d83136c30eeb2b318c4439c4adf4b7fc67f97f786200; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:34:04.400Z.