ERA19LA162 · Piper PA28 161
Paris Air Piper PA28 161 · Accident: fuel related while maneuvering
From Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB) to Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA162
- 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 PA28 161
- 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
- N3031W
- Operator
- Paris Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB), Vero Beach, FLTo Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB), Vero Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were practicing a simulated engine failure. After completing the emergency checklist, the student added engine power to recover from the maneuver about 500 ft above the ground, but the engine did not respond. The flight instructor took control of the airplane, verified the fuel selector position, and landed. The atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the development of carburetor icing at glide (idle) power settings, and the instructor reported that he did not apply carburetor heat during the simulated engine-out or attempted recovery. Based on the available information, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of the accumulation of carburetor ice during the idle-power descent and that the use of carburetor heat would likely have prevented the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to carburetor icing, and the flight instructor’s failure to effectively use carburetor heat while operating at an idle engine power setting in conditions conducive to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA162
- Event ID
- 20190429X41324
- Case number
- ERA19LA162
- 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, cause areas. 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: c1756f0016ff24cead5fcf1de990f05fe0c96562c19bf0a20197e51aaad8b173; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:50:25.123Z.