BFO96LA015 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From Virginia Highlands Airport (VJI) to 6V3 · Richlands, VA
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96LA015
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N477SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Virginia Highlands Airport (VJI), Abingdon, VATo 6V3 · Richlands, VA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- 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
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Corroded
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was in cruise flight at 5,500 feet when it began to vibrate severely. He stated that the subsequent oscillations in the pitch and yaw axis were so severe that he shut off the engine. The pilot made a forced landing in a soft field. During the landing roll, the nose gear and left main landing gear separated. Postaccident examination revealed that the outboard portion of a propeller blade had separated in flight. Metallurgical examination of the remaining propeller blade revealed a fracture with features indicative of fatigue cracking. The fatigue cracking features extended through about 80% of the cross section of the blade. The origin area of the fatigue cracking showed presence of corrosion damage. The airplane was in storage about 22 years. AD69-09-03 required all 76EM series propellers to be modified and a 'K' stamped after the serial number. The 'K' modification thinned and retuned the entire blade for improved vibratory characteristics. This modification lowered the stresses in the minimum power operating range. The AD also required that the tachometer be placarded to avoid continuous operation between 2150-2350 RPM. The propeller showed no 'K' stamp afer the serial number, and the pilot stated that he knew of no placard that existed in the airplane.
Probable cause
failure of the propeller blade due to fatigue cracking originating from corrosion damage. A related factor was the soft terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96LA015
- Event ID
- 20001207X04652
- Case number
- BFO96LA015
- 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: a3ca171cb0c0b5f54afca60fea5c55d2759a1ba91ac1afd90d806857bc1c3310; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:05:17.169Z.