ERA13LA220 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6) to Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA220
- 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-28-151
- 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
- N75148
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Daytona Beach, FLTo Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1976)
- 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
After completing an annual inspection of the airplane, the student pilot completed a preflight inspection and notified his flight instructor that he was going to depart. He reported that, while taxiing toward the runway, the engine stalled. He then "shut everything down" and spoke to a mechanic about what had just happened. The mechanic advised him that the fuel selector was in the "OFF" position. The student pilot then moved the fuel selector to the left-tank position. The student pilot then restarted the airplane, taxied onto the runway, and took off.
About 300 feet above ground level, the engine "sputtered." The pilot then leveled off the airplane and the engine restarted, but it lost power again. He then radioed that he was going to make an emergency landing, maintained the best glide speed, and tried to reland on the runway, but he missed the runway due to a "gust of wind" that pushed the airplane right. The pilot then lowered the nose to avoid trees and houses beyond the end of the runway. The airplane touched down right of the runway centerline, skipped once, and then slid to a stop. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
Data recorded by the airplane's onboard engine data monitoring system were consistent with a loss of engine power after takeoff, the power returning, and then a second loss of engine power. A postaccident engine test run did not reveal any preimpact failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Fuel was found in both fuel tanks. The atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were not conducive to the accumulation of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during initial climb for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examinations did not reveal any preimpact failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA220
- Event ID
- 20130429X62345
- Case number
- ERA13LA220
- 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: 12552a10f491fe059611e11ffaaaacb6eb956a673a72a081e65dc2e23aaa7ed8; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:22:28.308Z.