CHI96LA321 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Hays Regional Airport (HYS) to Ottumwa Regional Airport (OTM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA321
- 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
- N8456W
- Operator
- Edward L. Ely · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hays Regional Airport (HYS), Hays, KSTo Ottumwa Regional Airport (OTM), Ottumwa, IA
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Low level
- Object › Other
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that the airplane was in cruise flight at 5,500 feet mean sea level (MSL), and three hours into the flight, when he noticed that the oil pressure indicator read zero. The pilot performed a precautionary landing in a circular hay field which contained numerous rolled bales of hay. 'I planned to land on an upgrade, which I did, halfway up. As I topped the grade, two hay bales appeared. I opened the throttle, with no response, hoping to clear the bales of hay.' The airplane's right wing struck one of the hay bales and nosed over. Examination of the wreckage showed no anomalies. There was no evidence of in-flight oil loss. In a later statement, the pilot said that the airplane's engine was consuming 1.5 to 2 quarts of oil an hour. The engine operator's manual states that the maximum oil consumption for the engine in a one hour time period at normal power (2,700 RPM) is .80 quarts.
Probable cause
low oil level which resulted in the partial loss of engine power, the pilot's intentional operation of the airplane with a known mechanical deficiency, and the hay bale. Factors relating to this accident were the owner/pilot mechanic's failure to comply with engine operating parameters pertaining to oil consumption and the pilot's decision to perform a precautionary landing in a hay field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA321
- Event ID
- 20001208X06477
- Case number
- CHI96LA321
- 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: b4142362bd05c0afcf1d2c4cea2cad85ae2c9a960cc17adb0c434078559cba62; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:30:15.757Z.