DFW07TA089 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Avenger Field (SWW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07TA089
- 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-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N744
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Avenger Field (SWW), Sweetwater, TXTo not recorded
- 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
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Failure, partial
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 6,127-hour commercial pilot discovered that the throttle was locked and would not advance when he attempted to add power after leveling off during an enroute descent. The airplane continued to descend, and the pilot tried to "wiggle the throttle back and forth" but the throttle would not advance beyond 1,000 RPM. During the subsequent forced landing, just prior to touch down, the pilot pushed the throttle forward very hard and felt the throttle pop loose, and the pilot was able to move the throttle aft and forward; however, with no affect to the engine RPM. The airplane landed on rough and uneven terrain and the airplane nosed-over during the ground roll. A review of the airframe logbooks noted the aircraft had previously been repaired after previous mishaps. Additionally, the airframe had completely been rebuilt in July 2003, including replacement of the firewall during the scheduled overhaul for the airplane. A newly overhauled engine had been installed approximately 3.5 hours prior to the accident. The investigation revealed that a throttle cable support angle was missing from the firewall. No evidence was found to confirm that the support angle was installed when the engine firewall was last replaced.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the failure of the throttle lever/linkage. 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 DFW07TA089
- Event ID
- 20070403X00358
- Case number
- DFW07TA089
- 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. 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: 170851e102a7fc911f29da1100dae31d945b7dc6cad9194ef694ecd4a4087103; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:33:20.670Z.