LAX97LA266 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK) to Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA266
- 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-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
- N4667J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK), AZTo Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZ
- 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 · climb to 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
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
- Lubricating system, oil hose › Not secured
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner of the airplane, who is a certified A & P mechanic, had complied with an AD which required the replacement of the oil cooler hose. He ran the engine up to idle but did not remove the engine cowling to check for signs of an oil leak. The airport manager stated he noticed a large oil puddle at the site where the airplane was started and a trail of oil leading out to the runway. The airplane climbed about 250 feet when the engine quit and a forced landing was made. The engine teardown revealed no oil in the engine, with heat distress noted to the bearings and journals, and the number 2 connecting rod separated from the crankshaft. One oil cooler line was loose and required an 180-degree turn to tighten the nut.
Probable cause
The total oil exhaustion of the engine due to the inadequate maintenance installation of the oil cooler lines by the owner/mechanic.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA266
- Event ID
- 20001208X08449
- Case number
- LAX97LA266
- 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: cb4883a372154deb1aac7b35c9d32b4b68278b73d6d99444f0aebde62201eb04; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:17:53.435Z.