IAD96LA064 · Piper PA-22-135
Piper PA-22-135 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From ON4 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA064
- 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-22-135
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N3506A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ON4To not recorded
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Seized
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, major, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that shortly after takeoff, as the airplane climbed through about 130 feet AGL, the engine lost power. He attempted to make an emergency landing in a nearby open field but struck a power line and nosed over, coming to rest inverted in the field. The pilot stated that the terrain surrounding the airfield contained obstacles and power lines. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the center main crankshaft bearing had spun. Examination of the mating surfaces around the bolt holes, and on both halves of the engine block center main bearing caps revealed evidence of fretting. The engine manufacturer stated that improper torque of the main bearing through bolts would result in fretting. Maintenance records indicate that the engine was overhauled in March 1989, and had accumulated 105 hours at its most recent annual inspection on 8/21/95.
Probable cause
the overhaul maintenance personnel's improper major overhaul procedure (improper torque on the engine block center through bolts), which resulted in an in flight loss of engine power. A related factor was the lack of suitable terrain available for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA064
- Event ID
- 20001208X05589
- Case number
- IAD96LA064
- 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: e7fdb387a2218a663f0f1ca3ec0b0dd82fac9bdbf9605ca8a5a3f99030b6e60f; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:49:17.608Z.