CEN26LA242 · Piper PA-25-235
Plane and Simple Leasing Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Forest Lake Airport (25D) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA242
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N386AB
- Operator
- Plane and Simple Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Forest Lake Airport (25D), Forest Lake, MNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 4, 2026, about 0942 central daylight time, a Piper PA-25-235 airplane, N386AB, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Forest Lake, Minnesota. The pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations part 91 banner tow flight. The pilot reported that he completed a normal preflight inspection and engine runup. After a successful banner hook, the airplane struggled to climb. The pilot increased the throttle and fuel mixture to full, but the airplane could not maintain level flight. The pilot jettisoned the banner, and the airplane continued to lose altitude. The pilot conducted a forced landing into trees resulting in substantial damage to both wings, rudder, and vertical stabilizer. Postaccident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. According to FAA Special Airworthiness Bulletin CE-09-35, weather at the time of the accident was conducive to the formation of serious icing at glide power. The pilot reported that he did not turn on the carburetor heat when troubleshooting the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA242
- Event ID
- 20260705203311
- Case number
- CEN26LA242
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: fb9c982bb8c331cc2d7acdcdac09a949bcf1497c11bda41483a6f496c6631957; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:13:35.860Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Misspelled city name; 25D is Forest Lake Airport, Forest Lake, MN, as the location field and narrative spell it.