CEN22FA436 · Piper PA-28-140
Proflite Aero Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA436
- 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
- 0
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7329F
- Operator
- Proflite Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
**This report was modified on February 26, 2025. Please see the docket for this accident to view the original report.**
The flight instructor reported that the airplane was not performing as expected during the takeoff and initial climb. He took control of the airplane from his student and was able to clear trees off the departure end of the runway, but the airplane would not continue climbing and the engine was “noticeably weak.” He maneuvered the airplane, maintaining the best angle of climb airspeed (VX), and was unable to find a suitable landing area. The airplane impacted trees and the ground and a postimpact fire ensued.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and its engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies; however, the extensive fire damage precluded functional testing and examination of several airframe and engine components.
Recorded flight data indicated that the airplane was below the published Vx airspeed, but above stall speed. The airspeed derived from the data used surface winds reported at the departure airport and the actual winds encountered by the airplane could not be determined. This discrepancy could account for the difference in the derived speed and the speed the pilot reported. Operation of the airplane below VX could have reduced the airplane’s climb rate but any deficit to climb performance could not be quantified.
The recorded temperature and dewpoint at the time of the accident was conducive to the development of serious icing at glide power and was between the range for icing at glide and cruise power and serious icing at cruise power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA436
- Event ID
- 20220928106014
- Case number
- CEN22FA436
- 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, coordinates, 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: 1926385c189cb8a5057754a154a78c601efb9e0448b27e75297821c030cd77ad; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:51:57.091Z.