CEN11LA177 · Piper PA-16
Piper PA-16 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C) to Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA177
- 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-16
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-16
- 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
- N5945H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C), Palmyra, WITo Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C), Palmyra, WI
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a local flight, the pilot decided to overfly a frozen lake at low altitude. He reduced engine power to idle and the airplane descended to about 10 feet above the lake. The pilot attempted to arrest the descent with an increase of engine power; however, advancing the engine throttle did not result in an increase in engine power. A forced landing was immediately performed on the frozen lake. The airplane encountered an area of deep snow during touchdown and subsequently nosed over, damaging the vertical stabilizer, rudder, right wing, fuselage, and engine firewall. A postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies or failures that would have prevented its normal operation. A postaccident engine run was not performed due to the observed airframe and propeller damage. Although the pilot reported that he did not apply carburetor heat during the airplane's descent to the lake, a review of a carburetor icing probability chart and the weather at the time of the accident revealed that the conditions were not conducive to the accretion of carburetor ice. Local law enforcement reported that upon their arrival at the accident site there was ample fuel found within the airplane's fuel tanks.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons during a low-altitude pass over a frozen lake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA177
- Event ID
- 20110209X11526
- Case number
- CEN11LA177
- 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: a815faa872a6d68659d0ae5fe50693106929de8b37160514c7cc01cf527bafcb; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:47:23.747Z.