ERA16LA103 · Piper PA 28-161
Airborne Career Academy Piper PA 28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA103
- 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 28-161
- 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
- N8466G
- Operator
- Airborne Career Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Ft. Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1981)
- 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
- 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, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was flying over the ocean and just off the coast when an air traffic controller asked him to descend to 500 ft. The pilot reduced engine power and applied carburetor heat until he reached the assigned altitude, and he then attempted to increase engine power and level off; however, even with the throttle full forward, the engine power remained at its previous setting. The pilot attempted to resolve the situation, but he was unable to maintain altitude and ditched the airplane in the ocean Although weather conditions were conducive to serious icing at glide power, the pilot had applied carburetor heat during the descent which should have melted any carburetor ice during the descent. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The cause for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have contributed to the power loss.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA103
- Event ID
- 20160203X52126
- Case number
- ERA16LA103
- 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: a725d6c23162462f208f40d80071b0c49c0bafe8cabc28b60049892ff86553a4; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:08:19.054Z.