CEN21LA082 · Piper PA12
Piper PA12 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Airlake Airport (LVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA082
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA12
- 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
- N2554M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Airlake Airport (LVN), Lakeville, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 74 years (built 1946)
- 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 (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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before departing on the first flight after completion of the annual inspection, the pilot selected the right wing fuel tank, which was the fuller tank, performed an engine runup, and then initiated takeoff. The pilot said that the airplane climbed to about 70 ft above the runway, lost engine power for a few seconds, regained power briefly, then lost total power. The airplane landed hard on the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage.
A postacccident engine run revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal airplane operation. Based on the available evidence, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during initial climb for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA082
- Event ID
- 20201210102397
- Case number
- CEN21LA082
- 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: ff8093cbd67cf99502f6bc6ec884671b889aa9867810e49a210a089b26fd2867; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:28:45.568Z.