NYC07LA085 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Penn Valley Airport (SEG) to Ebensburg Airport (9G8)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA085
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N56124
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Penn Valley Airport (SEG), Sellingrove, PATo Ebensburg Airport (9G8), Ebensburg, PA
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Between 30 minutes to 1 hour into the visual flight rules flight, the pilot reported that the engine began to "run rough." The pilot applied carburetor heat, but that only made the roughness worse, so after about one minute, he turned the carburetor heat back off. The pilot then decided to "take emergency action," and performed a forced landing to the top of a nearby mountain. The weather conditions reported about 17 nautical miles west of the accident site, which was also located between the accident site and the destination airport, were well below the minimums for VFR flight. Additionally, when asked about the weather in-flight the pilot stated that there was at least 1-mile visibility, and that he stayed clear of the clouds, as he was in "class G" airspace. Interpolation of a carburetor icing probability chart revealed that the atmospheric conditions were conducive to "moderate icing" at cruise power or "serious icing" at glide power. An FAA publication provided pilots with warning signs of, and solutions to carburetor icing. The publication warned that a loss of engine rpm in airplanes equipped with a fixed pitch propeller is one sign that carburetor ice may be present. In order to counteract carburetor icing, the pilot should apply full carburetor heat immediately. The publication noted that the engine "may run rough initially for a short time while ice melts."
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of carburetor heat. Contributing to the accident were the weather conditions conducive to the formation of carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA085
- Event ID
- 20070414X00411
- Case number
- NYC07LA085
- 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: ab6d07645c131662eab4d22b5b0836b5d7245b647f05ad0172fbb49158c2415b; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:57:43.146Z.