CHI98LA279 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA279
- 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-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N875A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Fractured
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight, just over Lake Michigan, when the pilot felt the engine's power 'sag for just an instant and then engine noises started.' The 'noises' were 'light at first' and then increased in volume. Then the engine began to shake violently, eventually shaking the entire airframe. The pilot shut down the engine and turned the airplane back toward the shore. The pilot set up to land on a section of two-lane road near a highway. The pilot said that when he was on 'short, short final (about 15 to 20 feet above ground level),' he stalled the airplane. The airplane 'rebounded' approximately 5 feet into the air and weathervaned so that the pilot was looking at some trees. The pilot applied full left rudder just before the airplane touched down again. the airplane slid sideways until it came to a stop. Examination of the airplane's engine revealed the number four cylinder connecting rod was broken. A 2-inch diameter hole was located in the top aft portion of the engine crankcase. Oil was found covering the windscreen.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to a broken number 4 cylinder connecting rod for undetermined reasons. Contributing to this accident was the road embankment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA279
- Event ID
- 20001211X10528
- Case number
- CHI98LA279
- 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: ee08ae580605cc66ea59e0743c22f60b91c62f56f8566c89642caacf9f32aa93; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:19:06.498Z.