CEN15LA237 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From St Charles County Regional Airport/Smartt Field (SET) to St Charles County Regional Airport/Smartt Field (SET)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA237
- 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-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N118U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Charles County Regional Airport/Smartt Field (SET), St. Charles, MOTo St Charles County Regional Airport/Smartt Field (SET), St. Charles, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, while approaching the airport to land, he turned on the boost pump, reduced the throttle, and applied carburetor heat. While on downwind, he reduced the engine power to idle and lowered the flaps. While on the base leg, he advanced the throttle; however, the engine stayed at idle power. He turned off the carburetor heat, adjusted the throttle, and cycled the boost pump but was unable to regain engine power and elected to perform a forced landing to a plowed field. The airplane contacted a ditch at the end of the field, crossed over a road, and came to rest in another field, resulting in substantial damage.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel level in the right wing tank was "low" and the left wing fuel tank was about half full of fuel. A test run of the engine revealed no anomalies. The temperature and dew point conditions were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at glide power; however, the pilot reported that he had applied carburetor heat during the descent and that it was on when the engine would not regain power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power 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 CEN15LA237
- Event ID
- 20150520X20050
- Case number
- CEN15LA237
- 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: 170c1d95faea5f5ba51e40162b0ed6a3ebe90f015ec42547296e2d0e6200659a; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:20:05.675Z.