ERA09LA496 · Piper PA28-151
Plane Nonsense Piper PA28-151 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED) to Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA496
- 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 PA28-151
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N32146
- Operator
- Plane Nonsense
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MATo Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 pilot performed a preflight inspection prior to departure, including "topping off" the fuel tanks, and he observed no contamination in the fuel. After departure, the pilot maneuvered in the local area for about 20 minutes. He performed a stall maneuver and shortly after the airplane’s engine started to "sputter and run rough." The pilot attempted unsuccessfully to troubleshoot the problem, including turning on the carburetor heat and switching fuel tanks. When he realized that he would be unable to make it to a nearby airport, the pilot prepared for a forced landing to the highway below. During the landing, the left wing struck a barrier resulting in substantial damage. Examination of the airplane revealed sufficient fuel in the right tank and the left tank was breached. Examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies. Review of the Federal Aviation Administration carburetor ice probability chart revealed that the temperature and dew point at the time of the accident were conducive to "serious icing" conditions at glide power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to carburetor icing as a result of the pilot's delayed use of carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA496
- Event ID
- 20090901X40607
- Case number
- ERA09LA496
- 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: b46e1080089b68924ebbe95b8068ed00775995b01bc62f842c9d02ce344630dc; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:52:44.752Z.