WPR15CA095 · Piper PA 12
Piper PA 12 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Pearson Field (VUO) to Pearson Field (VUO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15CA095
- 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 12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N918TF
- Operator
- Nicolai Jane G
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearson Field (VUO), Vancouver, WATo Pearson Field (VUO), Vancouver, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 68 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
- En route · 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 (total)
- 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 15 minutes after takeoff, during cruise flight, the engine experienced a total loss of power. She pulled the carburetor heat control knob on, and initiated a forced landing to a grassy field. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with heavy vegetation, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing.
About 30 minutes prior to the accident, a weather station located about 10 nautical miles from the accident site reported a temperature of 48 degrees F and dew point of 43 degrees F. These weather conditions were conductive to the high probability of carburetor ice formation, with the potential for serious icing at cruise power.
During the postaccident engine examination, the engine was prepared for an engine run. The engine was started and run with no mechanical failures or malfunctions noted that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed action to use carburetor heat before the engine experienced a total loss of power while operating at cruise flight in conditions conducive to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15CA095
- Event ID
- 20150130X24929
- Case number
- WPR15CA095
- 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: 4131cd3640654ef8156bca7ce5aaa76c1be86c7ee246d32ff04d5311eaf12d61; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:03:45.318Z.