CEN12FA616 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Shirley Williams Airport (44TE) to Shirley Williams Airport (44TE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12FA616
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N70108
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shirley Williams Airport (44TE), Kingsland, TXTo Shirley Williams Airport (44TE), Kingsland, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses indicated that the airplane was climbing slowly in a nose-up attitude during the initial climb. They noted a slow forward speed and that the engine did not sound like it was operating at full power. The airplane had climbed to an altitude of about 125 feet above ground level and then suddenly rolled to the left and descended in a nearly vertical attitude and impacted terrain on the left side of the runway. The airplane was equipped with a 4-point shoulder harness installation; however, the pilot was using only a lap belt restraint system. Records showed that the airplane had been flown only once in the past year and that the required annual inspection was overdue.
A postaccident examination of the engine showed that corrosion and oil glazing were present and the intake valve on the No. 1 cylinder was stuck in the open position. Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the No. 1 cylinder intake valve was stuck open and resulted in a partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed following a partial loss of engine power resulting from an engine intake valve that became stuck open. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to operate the airplane when a required maintenance inspection was overdue. Contributing to the severity of the pilot’s injuries was his decision to operate the airplane without using the installed shoulder harness restraints.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12FA616
- Event ID
- 20120908X23751
- Case number
- CEN12FA616
- 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: a27dcac6a0ece5dd1919797bf243a6f6ab319eb18fae3b04ac2c9423ff8a7e35; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:43:51.869Z.