WPR21LA326 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA326
- 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 PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N2843T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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 airplane had just received an annual inspection, and the pilot and the flight instructor were flying it back to its home base. The pilot did not have a current medical certificate, and the flight instructor was on board to act as pilot in command. On departure in a slow climb passing about 1,800 ft mean sea level, the engine began to surge and sounded like “the throttle was cycling between open and closed.” The airplane began to lose altitude. The flight instructor declared an emergency and turned toward a racetrack.
They flew a downwind for the racetrack but determined they could not safely land there. Therefore, they elected to land on an interstate highway. Spotting a gap between cars, the flight instructor made a forced landing on the interstate. During the landing sequence, the airplane struck several vehicles and came to rest angled toward the interstate median barrier.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined, which resulted in a forced landing on an interstate highway and subsequent collision with vehicles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA326
- Event ID
- 20210825103752
- Case number
- WPR21LA326
- 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: 1c0bc2ee0ef8f5d1db8887bab09f18889efbec2f1165f5e32b67bb86a94d2b34; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:27:16.686Z.