ERA17FA001 · Culver PQ 14A
Culver PQ 14A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Hickory Regional Airport (HKY) to Hickory Regional Airport (HKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17FA001
- 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
- 1 · 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
Culver PQ 14A
- Aircraft type
- Culver PQ-14
- 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
- N4648V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hickory Regional Airport (HKY), Hickory, NCTo Hickory Regional Airport (HKY), Hickory, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 72 years (built 1944)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot, who owned the airplane, was making a local personal flight from his home airport. During taxi for takeoff, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot/owner reported to a controller in the airport's air traffic control tower that he did not know why the engine stopped but that he got it restarted. The airplane subsequently departed. Minutes after departure, the pilot reported "engine problems" to the controller, asked to return, and was cleared to land on any runway. The airplane reversed course and witnesses near the accident site reported hearing the engine sputter and then stop. The airplane struck trees about 1 mile from the extended runway centerline as the pilot was attempting to reach the airport.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have prevented normal engine operation. The fuel drained from the airplane presented the color and odor of automobile gasoline, and the pilot was seen refueling his airplane from cans transported in his car. Further, the pilot had not serviced his airplane with aviation gasoline at his home airport.
Atmospheric conditions were conducive to serious icing at descent power and moderate icing at cruise power. The airplane's loss of power when the power setting was low while taxiing and its loss of power when the power was reduced to cruise power after takeoff were both likely due to carburetor icing. A search of the airplane's maintenance records revealed no supplemental type certificate that authorized the use of automobile gasoline in the airplane, and the likelihood of carburetor icing is increased when automobile gasoline is used. While the airplane was equipped with carburetor heat, impact-related damage to the engine controls precluded an assessment of the control's preimpact position.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to carburetor icing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's use of automobile gasoline, which increased the likelihood of carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17FA001
- Event ID
- 20161001X44216
- Case number
- ERA17FA001
- 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: f76baea41a7e1767920249ca9e71665652e86e98f65c4400c63a8b2e677f356e; retrieved 2026-09-14T22:00:49.876Z.