WPR23LA249 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident en route
From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD) to Carson Airport (CXP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA249
- 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
- 0 · 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
- N4586R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD), Modesto, CATo Carson Airport (CXP), Carson City, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1965)
- 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
- En route
- 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 pilot was conducting a cross-country flight with one passenger on board the single-engine airplane. The pilot reported that, while approaching the Lake Tahoe area, he decided to perform a flight around the lake before continuing to his destination. While adding power to level off, he heard and felt a pop in the throttle handle and the rpm decreased. Subsequently, the throttle was not controlling the engine power and the rpm decreased to near idle. The pilot added full rich mixture and switched fuel tanks. Despite his actions the engine would not increase in power. The pilot made a radio call and pitched for best glide over the lake. The airplane nosed over after contacting the water; the pilot and passenger egressed and were soon rescued by nearby boaters. The search efforts did not locate the airplane and the wreckage was not recovered; therefore, the airframe and engine could not be examined, and the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA249
- Event ID
- 20230705192519
- Case number
- WPR23LA249
- 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: b7a9e3fd943fba315385739d1780b5c7f4c2f32ee045e59059505c9918da8ad3; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:48:14.193Z.