CEN19LA172 · Karns SKY RANGER
Karns SKY RANGER · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Green Landings Airport (WV22) to Green Landings Airport (WV22)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA172
- 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
Karns SKY RANGER
- Aircraft type
- Karns SKY RANGER
- 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
- N106RK
- Operator
- Roxand Cruz
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Green Landings Airport (WV22), Hedgesville, WVTo Green Landings Airport (WV22), Hedgesville, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noncertificated pilot and passenger had just departed for a local flight. After takeoff, when the airplane was about 100-150 ft above ground level, the pilot felt a loss of engine power and the engine speed decreased to about 3,000 rpm. About 3 seconds later, the engine speed decreased to about 2,300 rpm. The pilot said that he was unable to land on the remaining runway and there were power lines near the departure end of the runway, so he performed a turn back toward the departure runway. According to the pilot, the airplane descended and impacted terrain and sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. According to a carburetor icing chart, the weather conditions were conducive for serious carburetor icing at glide power, about the time of the accident, which would have allowed for carbuerator ice to build up while at reduced power on the ground. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with a loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during takeoff due to the formation of carburetor ice while on the ground, which resulted in an impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA172
- Event ID
- 20190617X64617
- Case number
- CEN19LA172
- 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: b54bbc1c70c62dee104ad7ae93d864a52e0db6cb14fe36e6ff0dc89bb1df06c1; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:17:29.810Z.