ERA09LA257 · Maule M-5-180C
Maule M-5-180C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Moultrie Municipal Airport (MGR) to Spence Airport (MUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA257
- 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
- Not recorded
Maule M-5-180C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-5
- 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
- N66VJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moultrie Municipal Airport (MGR), Moultrie, GATo Spence Airport (MUL), Moultrie, GA
- 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
- Approach
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 was flown from Texas to Georgia, with an intermediate fuel stop in Mississippi. After landing at an airport in Georgia, the pilot/owner realized that his destination was situated on a different airport, located about 6 miles away. The pilot stated that he departed for the other airport, and when the airplane was at an altitude of approximately 1,500 feet above mean sea level, and 2 miles from the second airport, the engine "quit running." Attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, and the pilot conducted a forced landing to a field, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane. Post-accident examination revealed that the airplane had sufficient fuel, and was configured properly for flight. The engine was successfully started and run with no problems. A detailed examination of the engine compartment revealed that the carburetor heat duct, which consisted of a material typically referred to as "scat tubing," was split around most of its circumference. Maintenance records indicated that an annual inspection was completed 4 days prior to the accident. The records indicated that the duct was installed on the airplane at least 8 years prior to the accident, and may have been installed 19 years prior to the accident. A representative of a manufacturer of aircraft scat tubing stated that the company considered the material to have a "shelf life" of 20 years.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to carburetor icing as a result of the maintenance technician's failure to detect and correct the condition of the carburetor heat duct.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA257
- Event ID
- 20090423X20338
- Case number
- ERA09LA257
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: c09f0d954b826284d23d061267e6a1d5631eb1cb6adb5bf90151962629671ce5; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:58:29.977Z.