CEN14LA133 · Cessna 182A A
Austin Skydiving Center Cessna 182A A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Lexington Airfield (TE75) to Lexington Airfield (TE75)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA133
- 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
Cessna 182A A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N6061B
- Operator
- Austin Skydiving Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lexington Airfield (TE75), Lexington, TXTo Lexington Airfield (TE75), Lexington, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1957)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the descent, he applied carburetor heat but that he then removed carburetor heat when leveling off. The pilot reduced the throttle to slow the airplane while on final approach. When he advanced the throttle to maintain airspeed, the engine power did not increase; the pilot was unable to restore full engine power. The engine subsequently lost all power when the pilot applied carburetor heat. During the forced landing to a field, the nose landing gear and propeller contacted a barbed wire fence, and the airplane then nosed down, impacted the ground, and nosed over. A postaccident examination revealed no mechanical failures that would have resulted in the loss of engine power. The atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at glide power. It is likely that carburetor ice developed after the pilot reduced the engine power/closed the throttle while in the traffic pattern without applying carburetor heat, which resulted in a loss of engine power. The manufacturer's before landing checklist states to apply carburetor heat before closing the throttle.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper use of the carburetor heat, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA133
- Event ID
- 20140211X74725
- Case number
- CEN14LA133
- 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: e377c3786fcccf97023d42a3cd2d8b1c2380d4adfdf4e7715333bf5f297882f8; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:18:56.831Z.