WPR19FA215 · North American T28A
North American T28A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Ontario Municipal Airport (ONO) to Ontario Municipal Airport (ONO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FA215
- 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
- 1 · 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
North American T28A
- Aircraft type
- North American T28
- 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
- N9862C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ontario Municipal Airport (ONO), Ontario, ORTo Ontario Municipal Airport (ONO), Ontario, OR
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 crosswind
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and one passenger were conducting a flight to test the landing gear. Following a low pass over the runway, the engine lost total power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field, during which he was fatally injured, and the passenger sustained serious injuries.
Postaccident examination of the carburetor revealed that, when the throttle arm was placed near the idle position, the internal idle valve was closed, which restricted fuel from flowing through the carburetor at lower power settings and likely resulted in the loss of engine power. It is likely that the pilot reduced the engine power during the low pass to a setting that would have allowed for the idle valve to close completely, thereby restricting the fuel flow. No additional anomalies were noted with the engine or airframe.
The airplane had not flown for about 8 years and had undergone maintenance for the previous 10 months before it first flew 6 days before the accident. One of the maintenance items performed included installation of a new carburetor. The mechanic who performed the annual inspection reported that he assisted in adjusting the idle setting on the carburetor. Whether any additional maintenance was performed on the carburetor before the accident flight could not be determined, and the engine logbook was not available for review.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the improperly adjusted carburetor idle valve.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FA215
- Event ID
- 20190809X33451
- Case number
- WPR19FA215
- 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: 737649eb35d780ea960e25053d784fa15ad89fced91b1d9353cceb2bf16e3275; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:03:20.233Z.