ERA19LA149 · Piper PA28R 201
Westchester Flying Club Piper PA28R 201 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Meriden Markham Municipal Airport (MMK) to Meriden Markham Municipal Airport (MMK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA149
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA28R 201
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N38658
- Operator
- Westchester Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Meriden Markham Municipal Airport (MMK), Meriden, CTTo Meriden Markham Municipal Airport (MMK), Meriden, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1977)
- 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 base
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he intended to fly in the airport traffic pattern after routine maintenance work. He noted no anomalies in the preflight inspection of the airplane or the engine runup and noted that the fuel was "to the tabs." He flew the normal traffic pattern and extended the downwind leg to allow time for another airplane in the traffic pattern. After reaching an altitude of about 500 ft above ground level on the base leg, he attempted to add power to maintain altitude. The engine did not respond, and the pilot noted that the tachometer indicated 2,000 rpm and was decreasing. The pilot attempted to restart the engine, but it did not respond, and the airplane continued to descend. During the forced landing to a baseball field, the airplane impacted power lines and subsequently impacted the ground tail-first. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation, and the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA149
- Event ID
- 20190411X15518
- Case number
- ERA19LA149
- 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: 545a051e3ec760fc0c8cf5197f95966c1b99cca6e31dcda730c32c11f543f912; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:43:38.979Z.