ERA16LA270 · Craig D Carter STOL CH 750
Craig D Carter STOL CH 750 · Accident: fuel related during initial climb
From Greene County Airport (WAY) to Greene County Airport (WAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA270
- 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
Craig D Carter STOL CH 750
- Aircraft type
- Craig D Carter STOL CH 750
- 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
- N750AZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greene County Airport (WAY), Waynesburg, PATo Greene County Airport (WAY), Waynesburg, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting a local instructional flight. Following uneventful touch-and-go-landings and a refueling, the student pilot and flight instructor departed again. Shortly after departure, the engine began to vibrate and lose power. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and landed straight ahead. During landing, the airplane impacted a row of tractor tires.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the accumulation of carburetor icing. The flight instructor stated that he applied carburetor heat once he noted the drop in rpm. After applying carburetor heat and noting the continued loss of rpm, he turned off the carburetor heat to reduce the loss of rpm and to extend the airplane's glide range. Rapid ice accumulation would have required the carburetor heat to be on for a longer period of time to fully melt the ice and restore full power to the engine. Therefore, it is likely that the carburetor accumulated ice during departure, which resulted in the partial loss of engine power and vibration during the subsequent climb.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA270
- Event ID
- 20160725X71121
- Case number
- ERA16LA270
- 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: 0e7bb1312b018c781eb9a444bfcae92243417069287a1942c827fda720605700; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:41:54.818Z.