MIA98LA082 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Hondarosa Airport (SC42) to Aiken Regional Airport (AIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA082
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N3965K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hondarosa Airport (SC42), SCTo Aiken Regional Airport (AIK), Aiken, SC
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, valve, exhaust › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off on a flight to return the aircraft to his home field after having had maintenance performed on the fuel system. During the initial climb after takeoff, a loss of engine power occurred. Emergency procedure for loss of power was accomplished with negative results, and a turn to the nearest field was begun. During the forced landing, the aircraft overflew the pilot's intended point of touchdown and collided with an earthen embankment and a barbed-wire fence. Subsequent teardown examination of the engine by FAA personnel revealed a broken exhaust valve in the number three cylinder. According to an FAA report, about 30 percent of the valve face was missing. The previous annual inspection was completed on 6/6/97; flight time since overhaul of the engine was reported as 1920.1 hours.
Probable cause
failure of the number three exhaust valve, which resulted in loss of engine power and a forced landing. Related factors were: the obstructions (earthen embankment and fence) in the emergency (forced) landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA082
- Event ID
- 20001211X09588
- Case number
- MIA98LA082
- 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: 142d77a9effe9edc34d6a18691594cc3cc499538480c7e24445812c56b1c8b33; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:01:50.129Z.