ERA15LA187 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR) to Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA187
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7598R
- Operator
- Hotung Lisa M
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR), Lancaster, NYTo Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR), Lancaster, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1966)
- 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 (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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that she noted no discrepancies during the preflight inspection, engine run-up, or start of the takeoff; however, when the airplane was about 200 ft above the end of the runway, the engine "coughed," and the airplane began losing altitude. The engine power was restored briefly, but the engine subsequently quit. The pilot landed the airplane straight ahead and touched down in an abandoned field with high grass. The nose landing gear impacted rising terrain, which resulted in the gear collapsing.
Postaccident examination of the carburetor revealed that the bowl assembly could be moved by hand pressure in relation to the throttle body assembly. Although the carburetor bowl was loose and such a condition is the subject of a service bulletin, the pilot could not have detected this condition during her preflight inspection, and it likely did not exist when the engine was last inspected nearly 10 months before the accident. During dynamic testing of the carburetor with down clamping force applied on its top portion, a slightly richer-than-specified fuel flow was noted. However, the color of the spark plugs was consistent with a lean-mixture condition. Thus, it is unlikely that the carburetor's condition contributed to the loss of engine power. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during takeoff for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examination of the engine or testing of the carburetor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA187
- Event ID
- 20150416X44654
- Case number
- ERA15LA187
- 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: 50bcb85bfdedd3849aef26cf5350b21cc65793ed334c91e7aa6f9b32d0b5c8fc; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:13:55.052Z.