ERA16LA212 · Piper PA28RT 201
Piper PA28RT 201 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Soggy Bottom Farm Airport (7KY3) to Samuels Field (BRY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA212
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA28RT 201
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N42JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Soggy Bottom Farm Airport (7KY3), Taylorsville, KYTo Samuels Field (BRY), Bardstown, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was attempting to take off from a 1,750-ft-long tall grass runway with a 4-knot tailwind. About one-quarter of the way down the runway, a witness heard the engine sputtering and observed that the airplane seemed slow. The witness radioed the pilot and asked him if he was going to reject the takeoff, but the pilot did not respond. The airplane rotated and climbed briefly, then descended and impacted downward-sloping terrain about 500 ft below and 250 yards beyond the departure end of the runway. The airplane came to rest inverted in a wooded area and was mostly consumed by a postcrash fire, the damage from which precluded an engine examination.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to continue a takeoff with a partial loss of engine power that occurred early in the takeoff roll. The reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined because postaccident fire damage to the engine precluded an examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA212
- Event ID
- 20160613X30040
- Case number
- ERA16LA212
- 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: bfb6beb4e2cd7ba20ad058ff04561e282dc0510f4d8bccf4c2d436ae95bfb0ba; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:29:57.060Z.