WPR18LA009 · Barber Warren D TURBINE CUBS P A 18
Barber Warren D TURBINE CUBS P A 18 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From U42 · West Jordan, UT to U42 · West Jordan, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA009
- 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
Barber Warren D TURBINE CUBS P A 18
- Aircraft type
- Barber Warren TURBINE CUBS P A 18
- 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
- N181TJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U42 · West Jordan, UTTo U42 · West Jordan, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he had just completed a low altitude pass and that when he applied power to initiate a climb, the engine "stumbled slightly and seemed to hesitate." The pilot applied carburetor heat due to concerns about carburetor ice and then applied full power. The engine again seemed to hesitate, and the pilot initiated a precautionary landing to an open salt flat. Shortly after touchdown, the airplane nosed over. The pilot reported that after he exited the airplane, he noted that both main wheel brakes were engaged, however neither he nor his passenger actuated the brake pedals during the landing sequence. A postaccident examination of the wheel brakes revealed no evidence of a preexisting malfunction or failure with the brakes.
Examination of the engine revealed that one of the two carburetor temperature probe wires were separated from an electrical connector, consistent with a bad crimp. The disconnected wire would have prevented the carburetor air temperature from being displayed on the airplane's avionics panel. The examination revealed no additional findings or evidence of a preexisting mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation. The atmospheric conditions in the area at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice at glide and cruise power. It is likely that the hesitation in the engine performance reported by the pilot was the initial stages of the accumulation of ice in the carburetor, which precipitated the off-airport precautionary landing.
Probable cause
The activation of the wheel brakes during landing, which resulted in a nose-over. The reason for the wheel brake activation could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA009
- Event ID
- 20171015X10059
- Case number
- WPR18LA009
- 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: 0c8d77f6c0c5b52afd9159cb0d60d86f1238b58e2029bdae5312078c890c5aea; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:56:12.569Z.