WPR19LA102 · Cessna 172 L
Placerville Aviation Cessna 172 L · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Placerville, CA to Placerville Airport (PVF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA102
- 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
Cessna 172 L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N7033Q
- Operator
- Placerville Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Placerville, CATo Placerville Airport (PVF), Placerville, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1971)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 (partial)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the climb after takeoff the engine lost partial power. The pilot performed troubleshooting steps and initiated a return to the airport. The airplane was not able to maintain altitude and landed in trees about 300 ft short of the approach end of the runway.
Postaccident examination revealed sooting signatures on the spark plug electrodes and inner surfaces of the exhaust pipe, indicating an excessively rich fuel-to-air mixture. Examination of the carburetor revealed multiple maintenance-related discrepancies, including an incorrectly adjusted float and a loose carburetor bowl. The discrepancies likely resulted in mixture irregularities and a loss of engine power.
Maintenance instructions and a series of service bulletins had been published by the carburetor manufacturer to address these issues. The discrepancies appeared to have been present for a while and were likely present at the time of the last annual inspection. The carburetor had not been overhauled or serviced in at least 19 years even though the manufacturer recommended overhaul at 10-year intervals.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power due to an improperly maintained carburetor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA102
- Event ID
- 20190331X02304
- Case number
- WPR19LA102
- 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: 0e9c9847ac862bbe4f2fb305682ce73a453e7fa21a316b812e0ba4e84fe07a93; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:42:08.826Z.