CEN10LA259 · Piper PA32R 301T
Piper PA32R 301T · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (E38) to Fort Stockton Pecos County Airport (FST)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA259
- 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 PA32R 301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N6911Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (E38), Alpine, TXTo Fort Stockton Pecos County Airport (FST), Fort Stockton, TX
- 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 he performed an engine run-up prior to departure and everything was normal. He then advanced the throttle, prop control, and mixture from left to right and monitored the ehxhaust gas temperature (EGT) to make sure the temperature stayed in the high 1300-degree to low 1400-degree range during the takeoff roll. However, on this takeoff roll he noted that the EGT was reading 1450 degrees so he increased mixture to lower the temperature. Everything seemed to normalize until he became airborne and the engine spooled back. The pilot noted that the EGT was still high at 1440 degrees, so he attempted to land on the remaining stretch of runway. There was not enough room and the airplane exited the runway and collided with a deer fence. Examination of the engine revealed that the flexible hose and two clamps that connect the intercooler to the turbocharger inlet were not installed properly, which caused the flexible hose to slide out of position. The engine had been overhauled in 2007 and installed back on the airplane using the same propeller and accessories. There were no entries between the time the engine was installed to the date of the accident that indicated that either the turbocharger or the intercooler had been worked on. The last annual inspection was performed exactly one year prior to the accident.
Probable cause
improper installation of the flexible hose and two clamps that connect the intercooler to the turbocharger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA259
- Event ID
- 20100518X23127
- Case number
- CEN10LA259
- 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: 76d0d6440f3dcb36f727091501e3ac13c2b004d1f823380997679d66f3d89537; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:07:07.346Z.