CEN10LA416 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Terminal D Ranch Airport (TE58) to Terminal D Ranch Airport (TE58)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA416
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N35645
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Terminal D Ranch Airport (TE58), Bird Dog, TXTo Terminal D Ranch Airport (TE58), Bird Dog, 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
- 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 (total)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was practicing flight maneuvers near his home field over and around a lake. He reduced the engine's power to idle while performing a descending turn and then attempted to add power to bring the airplane to a level attitude. The engine experienced a total loss of power and the airplane's altitude was too low for the pilot to reach the shoreline. The pilot performed a forced landing into the lake, resulting in substantial damage to the left wing and aileron. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane and opined that the loss of engine power was due to carburetor icing. A postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector did not reveal any evidence of a preimpact anomaly. A review of a carburetor icing chart located in Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin CE-09-35 revealed that the airplane was operating in an area that was conducive to serious icing at glide power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power in flight due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA416
- Event ID
- 20100720X25208
- Case number
- CEN10LA416
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-07-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cbf4c895ae52c5fc76b50608358ee16b8f086abf0c4021ccd4ee74bad2acfb61; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:43:43.287Z.