CEN12LA175 · Piper PA-28-161
Skyways Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to Huron Regional Airport (HON)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA175
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-161
- 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
- N20GG
- Operator
- Skyways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SDTo Huron Regional Airport (HON), Huron, SD
- 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 · climb to 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)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instrument instructional flight, the airplane encountered clouds as it climbed through about 4,500 feet mean sea level (msl) and subsequently experienced a partial loss of engine power as it climbed through about 6,500 feet msl in conditions that were conductive to serious carburetor icing conditions. The flight instructor turned on the carburetor heat at the onset of the power loss, which resulted in an additional loss of engine power and a rough-running engine. The flight instructor subsequently turned off the carburetor heat because the airplane was unable to maintain altitude to return to the departure airport. The engine then experienced a total loss of power, and the pilot performed a forced landing. No engine anomalies were noted during a postaccident engine run; however, the carburetor heat valve only moved about 3/4 of its travel, so maximum carburetor heat was not available.
The flight instructor stated that he and the pilot receiving instruction reviewed the weather conditions as part of their preflight planning and determined that the weather was satisfactory for the intended flight. The instructor further stated that the carburetor heat appeared to be functioning during the pretakeoff engine run-up. The weather conditions encountered during the climb in the clouds were conducive to serious carburetor icing at cruise climb power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during climb due to carburetor icing. Contributing to the accident was the limited travel of the carburetor heat valve which prevented application of maximum carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA175
- Event ID
- 20120301X35342
- Case number
- CEN12LA175
- 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: 19fb02cdfca47c849c4b57292abbb747043d26136eb80b0d52f9dae6548a425a; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:21:06.998Z.