CEN14LA136 · Mahon Paul D CAPELLA XS
Mahon Paul D CAPELLA XS · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH) to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA136
- 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
Mahon Paul D CAPELLA XS
- Aircraft type
- Mahon Paul CAPELLA XS
- 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
- N239PM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH), Houston, TXTo David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (KDWH), Houston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2011)
- 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 (partial)
- 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
The pilot and passenger reported that the engine lost power shortly after takeoff. During the forced landing to a field, the landing gear hit a berm, and the airplane nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing, fuselage, and empennage. An examination of the airframe, engine, and related systems revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were favorable for the formation of serious carburetor icing at cruise power. It is likely that carburetor ice accumulated during the taxi, which resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA136
- Event ID
- 20140212X74207
- Case number
- CEN14LA136
- 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: 46eeb236594bd2ca801b8650393bb138be3b94a206595e7f455aad56ac93f8a7; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:19:07.012Z.