ERA11CA243 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE) to Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA243
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5325L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE), Latrobe, PATo Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE), Latrobe, PA
- 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
- Approach · IFR initial approach
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While flying an instrument landing system approach with his flight instructor, the pilot said he added power to stay on the glide slope but the engine remained at 1,600 rpm. He declared an emergency with the tower air traffic controller, and looked for a suitable forced landing area. During the forced landing on a hill, the wings and landing gear received substantial damage. Postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the throttle cable separated from the arm of the fuel servo. A review of the airplane's maintenance records revealed that the airplane had undergone an engine change 32 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to properly secure the throttle cable to the fuel servo.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA243
- Event ID
- 20110414X40226
- Case number
- ERA11CA243
- 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 2011-04-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0fda60cea20be05598c12cce537f81bc11c6e47ad910eb46ae1f52704b25cc5b; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:03:33.536Z.