CEN14LA244 · Crawford PRECEPTOR ULTRA PUP
Crawford PRECEPTOR ULTRA PUP · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Houston County Airport (KCHU) to Mitchell Municipal Airport (KMHE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA244
- 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
Crawford PRECEPTOR ULTRA PUP
- Aircraft type
- Crawford PRECEPTOR ULTRA PUP
- 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
- N1171Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houston County Airport (KCHU), Caledonia, MNTo Mitchell Municipal Airport (KMHE), Mitchell, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 1997)
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had recently purchased an airplane and was ferrying it to his home airport. During the first leg of the trip, he reported that the engine's rpm decreased two or three times from 3,200 to 2,800 rpm. The engine regained power shortly after the pilot applied carburetor heat. Shortly after departure on the second leg of the trip, the pilot felt a vibration in the engine, so he applied carburetor heat; however, the engine lost power and the airplane collided with trees in a wooded area. An examination of the engine did not reveal a reason for the power loss. A review of the carburetor icing probability chart indicated that the airplane was operating in an area that was associated with a risk of carburetor icing at glide power settings and light carburetor icing at cruise power. Because the airplane was being operated in an area of potential carburetor icing, and no anomalies could be found during postaccident testing, the engine likely lost power due to carburetor icing. However, the investigation was not able to determine that earlier application of carburetor heat would have prevented the loss of power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA244
- Event ID
- 20140519X23435
- Case number
- CEN14LA244
- 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: d9bbfa153acbe1a14b6e0385ae67c61a1a3f9bc440088062eb4cf1eb4cac22c9; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:38:11.854Z.