CEN09CA378 · Piper PA-24
Piper PA-24 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Grimes Field (I74) to Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport (SGH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA378
- 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-24
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7660P
- Operator
- Marc S. Comegys · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grimes Field (I74), Urbana, OHTo Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport (SGH), Springfield, OH
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the engine run-up prior to the first flight of the day, he noted that there was no resistance on the control knob when he checked the operation of the carburetor heat and that there was a slightly “sluggish” return in the engine rpms as it returned to normal. The engine operated normally during this flight. When he applied carburetor heat during the engine run-up for the second flight of the day, he noticed that the rpm needle "wiggled down 50" then returned to the set rpm. Everything appeared normal during the takeoff until the airplane reached about 200 feet above the runway, when it felt a little “soggy.” The pilot stated that he raised the landing gear to reduce drag, but it did not seem like the engine was producing power. The pilot then extended the landing gear and decided to land the airplane in a field off the end of the runway. The landing gear, which was not locked down, collapsed during the landing and the left wing was substantially damaged when it contacted a runway end identifier light. Postaccident inspection of the airplane and engine revealed that the carburetor heat bracket between the valve shaft and the cable was fractured and missing. The carburetor heat valve was in the open position.
Probable cause
A failure of the carburetor heat cable attach bracket which resulted in the inadvertent activation of carburetor heat and the subsequent loss of engine power during takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's operation of the aircraft with a known deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA378
- Event ID
- 20090623X45648
- Case number
- CEN09CA378
- 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: f84afad1a59eb995ccf3e431ee397950c9ba3c8056c139fc1b89e572de7f101d; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:33:14.643Z.