CEN18LA038 · Piper / Laudeman J3C 65
Flying Hawks Piper / Laudeman J3C 65 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C) to Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA038
- 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 / Laudeman J3C 65
- Aircraft type
- Piper / Laudeman J3
- 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
- N11188
- Operator
- Flying Hawks
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C), Palmyra, WITo Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C), Palmyra, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 72 years (built 1945)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two airline transport-rated pilots departed on a personal, local flight to practice maneuvers. While returning to the departure airport and on the downwind leg, the rear seat pilot inadvertently pulled the fuel shutoff valve, which resulted in a total loss of engine power. The front seat pilot attempted to push the fuel shutoff valve back in but was unable to do so. The rear seat pilot then conducted a forced landing, during which the airplane impacted a tree about 2,000 ft short of the runway threshold, which resulted in substantial damage to both wings.
Earlier in the year before the accident, both pilots frequently flew an airplane with a carburetor heat control that was in a similar position as the accident airplane's fuel shutoff valve. The rear pilot stated that he may have inadvertently pulled the fuel shutoff lever instead of the carburetor heat control. Therefore, it is likely that habit patterns developed from operating an airplane with different flight controls contributed to the rear seat pilot inadvertently pulling the fuel shutoff valve.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent pulling of the fuel shutoff valve, which resulted in a total loss of engine power and a subsequent forced landing into trees. Contributing to the pilot’s inadvertent pulling of the fuel shutoff valve were habit patterns he had developed from operating an airplane with different flight controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA038
- Event ID
- 20171127X03747
- Case number
- CEN18LA038
- 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: 5a1142562b47cd2309f73cc065662afe82304f90228823c7a7904694c2d5a63b; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:02:00.826Z.