ERA14LA261 · Piper PA-11
Piper PA-11 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Cooperstown-Westville Airport (K23) to Cooperstown-Westville Airport (K23)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA261
- 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-11
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-11
- 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
- N4550M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cooperstown-Westville Airport (K23), Cooperstown, NYTo Cooperstown-Westville Airport (K23), Cooperstown, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1949)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he completed several takeoffs and landings and then made a scenic flight in the vicinity of the airport. As he was preparing to land, the pilot noticed a "considerable" loss of engine power, which he attributed to carburetor ice. As in the past, he applied carburetor heat, but the airplane would not climb and it was rapidly losing altitude. The pilot decided to land on the road next to the airport, but, with the loss of engine power, the airplane "dropped" over some trees and impacted a power pole. The airplane then spun around and collided with a pole barn. Ground slash marks and propeller blade leading edge damage indicated that the engine was still under partial power when the airplane hit the ground. The pilot did not note any preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. A Federal Aviation Administration carburetor icing probability chart indicated the probability of "serious icing at glide power." The pilot stated that he should have applied carburetor heat earlier in the approach.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed use of carburetor heat during the approach to landing, which resulted in the formation of carburetor ice, a partial loss of engine power, and the airplane’s subsequent inability to sustain flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA261
- Event ID
- 20140527X34422
- Case number
- ERA14LA261
- 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: e5f04f67859d977316c71980390596111ac2711e58ad4dcb3ee0dc7db840d30b; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:40:22.002Z.