IAD99FA025 · Lake LA-4-250
Lake LA-4-250 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Laconia Municipal Airport (LCI) to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD99FA025
- 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
Lake LA-4-250
- Aircraft type
- Lake LA-4
- 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
- N14001
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laconia Municipal Airport (LCI), Laconia, NHTo Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT), Manchester, NH
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fluid, oil › Inadequate
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, not performed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Laconia, NH, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner, sitting in the left seat, and flight instructor were on an instructional instrument flight. Shortly after takeoff, the airplane was seen trailing smoke. The smoke and engine noise stopped, then started again as the airplane leveled off, and began a left, 180-degree turn. The smoke and engine noise again stopped. Then the airplane descended, impacted a parking lot in a left-wing-down attitude, and bounced through a snow bank and down a 15-foot embankment, onto a field. It then rolled upside down, and caught on fire. A large hole was in the top of the engine crankcase, in line with a dislodged number 4 connecting rod. A hole in the bottom of the case was in line with a dislodged number 5 connecting rod. The number 1 connecting rod bearing and journal had light distress scoring in line with the oil supply hole. The number 2 connecting rod bearing and journal were normal, except for fire and heat damage to the bearing. The number 3, 4, 5, and 6 connecting rod journals had heavy distress scoring with extruded bearings. The injuries sustained by the pilot/owner precluded any recollection of the flight. He was not known to preheat the engine, and there were no witnesses to the airplane's preflight, start, runup or takeoff. Outside air temperature was 23 degrees Fahrenheit, and the airplane was stored in an unheated hangar. Recommended time between engine overhaul was 2,000 hours, or 12 years, which ever came first. The engine had in excess of 919 hours of operation, was built over 15 years earlier, and had not had an overhaul.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during initial climb due to oil starvation. Contributing to the accident was the failure to perform an engine overhaul.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD99FA025
- Event ID
- 20001204X00064
- Case number
- IAD99FA025
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: 69aaa4c7ac1096fb48805a575bf636e204fb667f85d96cbd168dde87ddf283be; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:16:34.953Z.