ATL96LA019 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From LaGrange Callaway Airport (LGC) to Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96LA019
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N180KH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGrange Callaway Airport (LGC), LaGrange, GATo Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA), SPARTENBURG, SC
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, oil › Contamination, other than water
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, major repair, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, in instrument meteorological conditions, the engine quit. The pilot established an emergency descent, and received radar vectors to a nearby airport. Subsequently, the airplane collided with the ground one mile east of the airport. A post accident examination of the engine disclosed that the engine oil was contaminated with aluminum flakes, and several internal components were damaged. The number 3 piston pin was scored, and the cylinder wall was damaged. A review of the aircraft maintenance logs disclosed that six flight hours prior to the engine failure, aluminum flakes were discovered in the engine oil. According to the mechanic who repaired the engine, the number 2 and 4 cylinder piston pin caps were scored. The mechanic flushed the engine of the metal flakes and repaired the number 2 and 4 cylinders.
Probable cause
The mechanic's failure to adequately inspect and repair the engine, which resulted in engine oil contamination, and the subsequent loss of engine power. A factor was the low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96LA019
- Event ID
- 20001207X04948
- Case number
- ATL96LA019
- 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: 445eca3b65e3eed068813e446dc77cf9a64d5239f1075cff65abe24ab09c332c; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:58:05.398Z.