CEN17LA031 · Piper PA 28-236
Piper PA 28-236 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From 4K3 · Lexington, MO to Camdenton Memorial Airport (OZS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA031
- 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 28-236
- 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
- N4376V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4K3 · Lexington, MOTo Camdenton Memorial Airport (OZS), Camdenton, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1985)
- 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 (total)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that the airplane experienced an abrupt, total loss of engine power during the initial climb on takeoff. He lowered the nose and conducted a forced landing to an open field; upon touchdown, the nose landing gear collapsed and the engine mount sustained substantial damage. An examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Nearby temperature and dew point were plotted on a carburetor icing probability chart. Although the atmospheric conditions present at the time of the accident were conducive to the development of serious carburetor icing at a cruise power settings, the pilot stated that an operational check of the carburetor heat during the pre-takeoff engine run-up produced a drop in rpm, consistent with an absence of carburetor ice. Further, the pilot did not report reduced power output during the engine run-up or upon application of takeoff power; therefore, it is unlikely that carburetor ice resulted in the sudden loss of power experienced after takeoff.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during takeoff for reasons that could not be determined based on available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA031
- Event ID
- 20161031X82443
- Case number
- CEN17LA031
- 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: cf6a3df84665927cba4868a53dacc42c77dea73693dcb87645b35ed3ec26a9e0; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:47:58.328Z.