CHI96LA186 · Grumman-Schweizer G-164B
Grumman-Schweizer G-164B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA186
- 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
Grumman-Schweizer G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N48518
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Cracked
- Engine assembly, master rod › Failure
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was at 200 feet turning for a spray run and the engine began 'running very rough, some smoke and oil noticed.' He conducted a forced landing in an 'open, rough field which had recently been saturated with heavy rain fall. Upon touch down, the main wheels began sinking in the mud and caused the aircraft to slowly flip forward....' The owner of the airplane reported that the engine was properly serviced prior to flight. Examination of the engine revealed five cracked cylinders and a master rod failure. The chief inspector of the FAA approved overhaul facility that examined the engine reported that 'the damage found during disassembly was typical of other engines known to have been oil starved during operation. The cause of oil starvation in this engine is unknown.'
Probable cause
catastrophic engine failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA186
- Event ID
- 20001208X05739
- Case number
- CHI96LA186
- 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: 46cfaeb6f30cdbfb7adaf8cb6dc9be98eca5dcf073c27bc505fc3c8118cfc6df; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:26:48.901Z.