ERA09WA546 · Piper PA18 150
FumiPalma Piper PA18 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Barbones to Barbones
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09WA546
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · 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 PA18 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA18
- 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
- HC-AHD
- Operator
- FumiPalma
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BarbonesTo Barbones
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 25, 2009, about 1330 central standard time, a Piper PA-18-150, Ecuadorian registration HC-AHD, registered to and operated by FumiPalma S.A., crashed following a loss of engine power, while on an approach for landing at the Pista Bardones, El Oro, Ecuador. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed and no flight plan was filed. The pilot and passenger were killed and the airplane was destroyed by a post-crash fire. The flight originated from the same airstrip about 10 minutes prior to the accident.
According to information obtained from the Ecuadorian Subdireccion de Aviacion Civil, the pilot completed several touch-and-go landings and made a stop for a break before the accident flight. After the break, the pilot took onboard a passenger for a local pleasure fight. After a duration of 10 minutes, the airplane was observed approaching for a landing, at which time the engine stopped producing power and the airplane impacted the terrain, 1,970 feet short of the intended airstrip. A fire ensued immediately following the impact.
This investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Ecuador. Any further information can be obtained from:
Direccion General de Aviacion Civil Departamento de Seguridad de Vuelo Buenos Aires 149 Y 10 de Agusto Casilla 2077 Quito, Republica del Ecuador
Fax; 593-2- 223-8352
This information is for informational purposes only and contains information released by, or obtained for, the government of Ecuador.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09WA546
- Event ID
- 20091001X73524
- Case number
- ERA09WA546
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aea3b8f6e00d3df68131c169286d4c6ae166a85800c6498a9460a927762e7bbc; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:30:29.570Z.