CEN16LA133 · Mathieu CASSUTT
Mathieu CASSUTT · Accident: fuel related en route
From Millard Airport (MLE) to Millard Airport (MLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA133
- 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
Mathieu CASSUTT
- Aircraft type
- Mathieu CASSUTT
- 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
- N78RM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Millard Airport (MLE), Omaha, NETo Millard Airport (MLE), Omaha, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a local flight, the pilot noticed the engine was running rough when he added power. He attempted to troubleshoot the problem; however, the engine continued to run rough, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field. The landing gear collapsed, and the airplane came to rest upright. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine found no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that he routinely flew with a partially-open carburetor heat setting. Since the weather conditions around the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice at glide and cruise power, it is likely that the partial carburetor heat setting and the lower power setting increased the engine's susceptibility to the formation of carburetor ice, resulting in the rough-running engine. When the pilot changed the throttle setting, full power was not available due to the ice formation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to operate with partial carburetor heat while operating in conditions conducive to the formation of carburetor ice, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA133
- Event ID
- 20160328X12800
- Case number
- CEN16LA133
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-03-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 32cd95e706d2092ded6600605ed2d49eefef503e3b798263bd5ee2ca3f79d397; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:14:43.177Z.