LAX97LA280 · North American NAVION B
North American NAVION B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA280
- 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
North American NAVION B
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N512AK
- Operator
- Brian Banks
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)To 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 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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, cylinder › Separation
- Engine assembly, other › Undertorqued
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, major, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot completed a run-up with no malfunctions noted, and was cleared for a left downwind departure. As he was departing from the downwind he felt a vibration on the yoke and was returning to land. About 10 seconds later the vibration on the yoke became violent. An explosion occurred and the cabin reportedly filled with smoke. A second explosion followed and the cowling departed the right side of the aircraft and struck the windshield. The pilot made a landing in a residential area, striking a tree and a vehicle during the landing sequence. Examination of the engine revealed that the No. 3 cylinder had separated from the engine, and the hold down nuts to the No's. 1 and 5 cylinders were hand tight. Review of the maintenance records disclosed no evidence of cylinder removals since the last overhaul in 1982, which was 55 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The separation of the number 3 cylinder due to improper overhaul procedures, and the failure to adequately torque the cylinder hold down nuts and through bolts to specification.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA280
- Event ID
- 20001208X08673
- Case number
- LAX97LA280
- 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: a721aade3d44a571d14021257ffb82330a34f5072d358b6cb9cf76b45880de4e; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:55:10.942Z.