IAD96LA105 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Capital City Airport (CXY) to McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA105
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N6994Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Capital City Airport (CXY), PATo McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS), Knoxville, TN
- 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
- Partial 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that his preflight inspection, start, taxi and pre-takeoff checks were all normal. After takeoff, at approximately 150 feet, the right engine seized immediately. The pilot was unable to turn the airplane safely and return to the airport to land, so concentrated on maintaining directional control. With rising terrain to the left and a populated area with a river to the right, the pilot selected to turn into the dead engine. Once over the river, he noticed a dam in one direction and knew he did not have the climb capability to fly over it. He turned the opposite direction only to notice high tension wires strung across the river. He knew he could not gain altitude to fly over the wires and did not think he could get underneath them. He made another steep turn to remain over the river and to avoid the high tension wires and in so doing, lost his remaining altitude and accepted a water landing. Just prior to water impact, the pilot leveled the wings and pulled the nose of the airplane up to lessen the impact forces. Eamination of the wreckage showed that the landing gear where down and the pilot stated that he could not recall raising the landing gear.
Probable cause
Failure of the right engine due to a fatigue fracture of the crankshaft resultant from heat cracks from an undetermined source.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA105
- Event ID
- 20001208X06252
- Case number
- IAD96LA105
- 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: c47d63db9902f6053f7e0f88d9017fb213e23f06fbee103d812d49dbff4f1d05; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:40:18.837Z.