SEA07CA086 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Pierce County-Thun Field (KPLU) to Pierce County-Thun Field (KPLU)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA086
- 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-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N968A
- Operator
- Judith Masura
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pierce County-Thun Field (KPLU), Puyallup, WATo Pierce County-Thun Field (KPLU), Puyallup, WA
- 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)
- 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, not used
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight in ambient weather conditions under which the aircraft's carburetor was susceptible to icing (temperature 10 degres C, and dew point 7 degrees C), the engine began to lose power. Although the pilot switched fuel tanks, she did not apply carburetor heat, and eventually all engine power was lost. The pilot attempted a forced landing in a nearby field, but during the landing roll the aircraft encountered soft, muddy terrain, whereupon it rocked from side to side with sufficient amplitude to result in the wingtips coming in contact with the terrain. A post-accident inspection of the engine found no anomalies that would have kept the engine from running under non-icing conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat during cruise flight. Factors include ambient weather conditions that were conducive to carburetor icing, and soft, muddy terrain at the location where the pilot attempted the power-off forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA086
- Event ID
- 20070501X00492
- Case number
- SEA07CA086
- 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: fe2c153fce9f55bd89407f784b7aeb81df418b88b6123215f4840dbb087c4844; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:56:35.930Z.