WPR15LA015 · Piper PA28 151
Piper PA28 151 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Sun Valley Airport (A20) to Henderson Executive Airport (HND)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA015
- 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 PA28 151
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N56873
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sun Valley Airport (A20), Bullhead City, AZTo Henderson Executive Airport (HND), Henderson, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was departing for a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, after takeoff and during the initial climb, the engine was not producing adequate power to maintain altitude or climb. The stall warning horn sounded when the airplane was about 500 ft above ground level. The pilot pushed the airplane's nose down and then maneuvered the airplane to fly under power lines that were in its immediate flightpath. Unable to maintain altitude, the airplane subsequently impacted uneven desert terrain and caught fire.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during the initial climb for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA015
- Event ID
- 20141019X50339
- Case number
- WPR15LA015
- 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: 1da89277923a8ab70edf941ac92420af02bc1e38b85300298fd7b4c42c46f8ef; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:52:01.478Z.