CEN10LA370 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Moraine Air Park (I73) to Branson Airport (BBG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA370
- 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-24-250
- 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
- N5798P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moraine Air Park (I73), Dayton, OHTo Branson Airport (BBG), Branson, MO
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained a loss of engine power in cruise flight at 6,000 feet mean sea level. The pilot observed the propeller RPMs increase and then noticed the engine was not producing full power. He selected both main fuel tanks and turned on the electric fuel pump. The airplane impacted a tree during the forced landing, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. A postaccident examination of the wreckage, which included an engine operational test run, revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction. The recorded temperature, dew point, and calculated values aloft were plotted on an icing chart and their intersection fell in the “serious icing (glide power)” range. The airplane Owner’s Handbook for emergency procedures during an engine failure indicated, in part, that the pilot should apply carburetor heat. The pilot reported that he did not use carburetor heat following the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to carburetor icing as a result of the pilot not using carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA370
- Event ID
- 20100706X82728
- Case number
- CEN10LA370
- 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. 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: 7ebc23788a2c19df87ab9c8dd0589010f3dca7d42dc016aae694850b632b6fb2; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:37:00.967Z.