WPR14CA197 · Cessna 140 G
Cessna 140 G · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Nut Tree Airport (KVCB) to Nut Tree Airport (KVCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA197
- 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 140 G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N2256N
- Operator
- Mcdonald Kevin
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nut Tree Airport (KVCB), Vacaville, CATo Nut Tree Airport (KVCB), Vacaville, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1947)
- 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 (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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taking off for a personal local flight and about 150 feet in the air, the engine lost partial power. The pilot decided to land the airplane on the remaining runway. As the airplane approached the end of the runway, the pilot said he applied the brakes too hard, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, vertical stabilizer, and rudder.
The pilot said he had replaced two engine cylinders, and during the previous days he had run the engine on the ground in accordance with the cylinder break-in procedure. The accident flight was the first flight after the engine repair. Prior to the flight, he had done an extended ground run without the use of carburetor heat. He said during the initial climb the engine lost power, acting like it might have had water in the fuel, but during the preflight inspection, he had sumped the tanks, and found no water.
According to a carburetor icing chart, the weather conditions at the time of the accident bordered between serious icing at glide power and serious icing at cruise power.
Probable cause
The pilot's use of excessive brakes during landing, which resulted in a nose over. Contributing to the accident was a partial loss of engine power during takeoff initial climb, likely due to carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA197
- Event ID
- 20140521X80101
- Case number
- WPR14CA197
- 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: 7185dea85cbe10f4edee068a36649a1f4998a392cf7c2cf2976a7253de330b3b; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:38:48.063Z.