WPR16LA033 · Piper PA 28-140
Piper PA 28-140 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25) to Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA033
- 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
- N7PM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25), Wickenburg, AZTo Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25), Wickenburg, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and private pilot were approaching the airport for landing. According to the flight instructor, when the pilot applied engine power to arrest the airplane's descent, the engine did not respond. Because the airplane was not within gliding distance of the runway, the pilots performed an emergency landing on desert terrain, sustaining substantial damage to both wings, the fuselage, and empennage. Examination of the engine revealed that the carburetor mixture control cable clamp, which should have been located between the firewall and the carburetor mixture control arm, was missing. Without the clamp, the mixture control cable could flex, which resulted in no corresponding movement of the arm when the mixture control lever was adjusted in the cockpit. A test of the engine with a makeshift clamp revealed no anomalies. It is likely that, because the airplane had flown about 1 hour before the accident, the mixture control cable clamp separated during the flight, and the mixture control arm became stuck in a reduced-fuel position, resulting in a partial loss of engine power. The engine had been reinstalled on the airplane about 1 hour tachometer time before the accident. It is likely that the clamp was improperly installed or secured at that time.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to a separation of the mixture control cable clamp, which was either not installed or secured correctly during maintenance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA033
- Event ID
- 20151125X60031
- Case number
- WPR16LA033
- 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, cause areas. 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: fe1e1fbed6f259ee65f262c6aef500627432a5febb785423c213c4f5d8626f4c; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:59:37.933Z.