Starcheck Piper PA-60-601 accident
Piper PA-60-601 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From MWD · Chicago, IL to Saint Paul Downtown Holman Field (STP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI93LA371
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-60-601
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-60
- 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
- N9825Q
- Operator
- Starcheck
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MWD · Chicago, ILTo Saint Paul Downtown Holman Field (STP), ST. PAUL, MN
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING CRUISE FLIGHT THE PILOT NOTICED A LOSS OF OIL PRESSURE AND AN INCREASE IN OIL TEMPERATURE ON THE LEFT ENGINE. HE SHUT DOWN THE ENGINE AND DIVERTED TO THE NEAREST AIRPORT. A VOR APPROACH WAS MADE AND DUE TO THE INABILITY TO MAINTAIN ALTITUDE, THE PILOT WAS UNABLE TO CIRCLE TO LAND ON THE LONGER RUNWAY. DURING THE LANDING ROLL, THE AIRPLANE OVERRAN THE END OF THE RUNWAY AND CONTACTED ROUGH TERRAIN. POST ACCIDENT INSPECTION REVEALED THE NUMBER 4 MAIN JOURNAL BEARING HAD SPUN. MATERIAL FROM THE BEARING AND THE DAMAGED CRANKCASE HAD CLOGGED THE OIL SUCTION SCREEN. WASHERS WERE FOUND ADDED TO THE OIL PRESSURE RELIEF VALVE IN AN ATTEMPT TO REGULATE THE OIL PRESSURE. THE ENGINE WAS OVERHAULED 350 FLIGHT HOURS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE MAINTENANCE AND EXCESSIVE AIRSPEED DURING THE LANDING APPROACH.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI93LA371
- Event ID
- 20001211X13384
- Case number
- CHI93LA371
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 0324dc2a928807e4c0338c769cf75e2dd51f1ab1438ead0e112ca082e823429d; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:28:34.142Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N9825Q; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.