ERA20LA335 · Piper PA28 151
Piper PA28 151 · Accident: fuel related while maneuvering
From an unrecorded airport to Georgetown, SC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA335
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA28 151
- 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
- N33859
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Georgetown, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Destroyed
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 noninstrument-rated pilot departed into instrument meteorological conditions and returned to the airport about 20 minutes later, communicating to a witness via radio that he could not see the ground. The witness attempted to guide the pilot back to the airport; however, the pilot stated he was having “engine trouble” and the airplane impacted trees in the vicinity of the airport. A postimpact fire ensued, which consumed most of the fuselage.
The propeller did not exhibit any rotational scoring and the carburetor air box was consumed by fire. There were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane or engine that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the temperature and dew point about the time of the accident, the conditions were favorable for serious carburetor icing at a cruise power setting.
It is likely that the engine lost power as a result of carburetor icing, and since the pilot reported to the local mechanic that he never used carburetor heat, the carburetor icing likely continued to accumulate until the engine lost total power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to use carburetor heat in conditions conducive to the development of carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA335
- Event ID
- 20200928102040
- Case number
- ERA20LA335
- 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: c3e3b8af4b2674513574ad378727f7f5b1481c06af045335a774154893de4e3e; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:07:16.760Z.