FTW99LA032 · Piper PA32-300
Piper PA32-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA032
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N2881U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA), New Iberia, LATo Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LA
- 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod bolt › Undertorqued
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, major, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane's engine experienced a catastrophic failure during cruise climb. The airplane impacted a tree and fence during the forced landing near a residential area. The airplane's maintenance records revealed that the engine had been overhauled on August 20, 1991, and had accumulated 1,423.49 hours since then. Examination of the engine revealed that the number 6 connecting rod had failed in 'overload' and was a 'secondary failure.' One of the connecting rod's bolt and nut assemblies was then examined. The nut was cut and split in the threaded area. The first two threads of the nut, adjacent to the contact surface, were found 'stripped.' Additionally, 'no scuff marks were observed' on the copper plating in the undamaged portion of the nut contact surface. It was determined that the two stripped threads were the result of the nut backing off during operation, and the lack of a scuff mark on the nut's contact surface was the result of it being improperly torqued during installation.
Probable cause
The mechanic's failure to properly torque the connecting rod's bolt and nut during engine overhaul. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA032
- Event ID
- 20001211X11428
- Case number
- FTW99LA032
- 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: fee97af25a2f2602cba46fef6766950bfa3e96e80b81d9974fa068550ba3111b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:38:59.657Z.