NYC98LA168 · Gulfstream American AA-1A
Gulfstream American AA-1A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N) to Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA168
- 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
Gulfstream American AA-1A
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream American AA-1
- 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
- N9364L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N), Ocean City, NJTo Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PA
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Corroded
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Failure
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Erial, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While at 1,500 feet, the engine developed a slight vibration. The pilot checked the fuel pump on, the mixture rich, and changed fuel tanks. The vibrations increased, and were accompanied by smoke. The pilot heard an explosive 'bang' and the cowling came up into his line of vision. Oil covered the pilot's side of the windscreen, and the engine was unable to maintain altitude. The airplane struck a telephone pole during the forced landing. Post flight inspection revealed a catastrophic failure of the engine's number two cylinder. Factory examination determined that the failure emanated from a rust pit on the outside of the cylinder wall. The cylinder, which was manufactured in July 1996, had 1,780 hours of service.
Probable cause
Catastrophic failure of the number 2 engine cylinder, emanating from a corrosion pit on the outside cylinder wall. A factor was the pilot's diminished forward visibility due to oil on the windshield.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA168
- Event ID
- 20001211X10940
- Case number
- NYC98LA168
- 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: ec2523757aa2497097eac1679dee45064ac43537018157f57b5320ea379bd0b3; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:42:56.023Z.