FTW97LA113 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From West Feliciana Parish Hospital Heliport (LA37) to 0LA2 · Prairieville, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA113
- 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-28R-200
- 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
- N2654T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Feliciana Parish Hospital Heliport (LA37)To 0LA2 · Prairieville, LA
- 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
- Lubricating system, oil quickdrain/drain plug › Activated
- Lubricating system, oil quickdrain/drain plug › Incorrect
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, compliance with ad, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the airplane's first flight following the installation of an overhauled engine, the engine lost power about 5 minutes after takeoff, and the pilot executed a wheels-up forced landing on a road. During the landing roll, the airplane's left wing struck a barrel. Examination revealed that when the landing gear was retracted the nose gear torque links had contacted the engine oil quick drain valve activating the valve, which resulted in the loss of all engine oil and engine seizure. Airworthiness directive (AD) 81-11-02 R1, effective October 2, 1981, applied to this airplane and required that if an oil quick drain valve was installed it must be a Piper Part No. 492-172V. The oil quick drain valve installed was found to be a Curtis model CCA-1700.
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to comply with an airworthiness directive which specified the correct type of oil quick drain valve for this airplane, the installation of an incorrect oil quick drain valve by maintenance personnel, and the subsequent activation of the valve during landing gear retraction which resulted in a total loss of engine oil and engine failure. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA113
- Event ID
- 20001208X07528
- Case number
- FTW97LA113
- 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: b68633d6066363c96fbffc11d8eb6903b6a5113418b7a9eb9c50e5d64f48875c; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:16:20.740Z.