CEN12LA244 · T Bird Golden Circle Air Inc II
T Bird Golden Circle Air Inc II · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Clara City, MN to Clara City, MN
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA244
- 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
T Bird Golden Circle Air Inc II
- Aircraft type
- T Bird Golden Circle Air II
- 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
- N5654N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clara City, MNTo Clara City, MN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-certificated pilot changed the airplane's fuel and then conducted several high-speed taxi runs to check engine operation in preparation for the airplane’s first flight after several months of inactivity. Shortly after the subsequent takeoff, the airplane's engine began to run rough and then lost power. The pilot elected to conduct a forced landing in a vacant field. A postaccident examination confirmed flight and engine control continuity and did not detect any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies. Although review of a carburetor icing probability chart indicated that the weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide power, the investigation was unable to determine the cause of the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The airplane's loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA244
- Event ID
- 20120416X50902
- Case number
- CEN12LA244
- 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: 780f60f66ee632c12e67852c1803e7b79076d498c62cd9389dbeb106fc84e223; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:46:29.802Z.