LAX99LA201 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Castle Airport (MER) to 061 · Cameron Park, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA201
- 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-32R-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N38908
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castle Airport (MER), Atwater, CATo 061 · Cameron Park, CA
- 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 › Failure
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Fatigue
- Manufacturer › Inadequate quality control
- Manufacturer › Maintenance, overhaul, major, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had a catastrophic engine failure while the pilot was in cruise flight at 4,500 feet. The pilot declared an emergency and began to perform the emergency checklist. The pilot located a flat field and struck a barbed wire fence during the landing roll, which damaged the wings and collapsed the nose gear. The engine was sent back to the Textron Lycoming factory for materials examination. The No. 6 connecting rod initially fractured through the cap with the fracture most likely initiating from an area of galling on the inner diameter of the cap. The fracture was propagated by a fatigue mechanism until it failed with catastrophic overload. Following the metallurgical examination on the No. 6 connecting rod and associated components, additional disassembly of the engine was accomplished that did not conform to investigative protocols. No measurements were taken of the case through bolt torque or the remaining rod end cap bolt torque. No determination was made whether the bearing inserts were of the correct size or assembled properly in engine build-up. Review of the engine maintenance records disclosed that it was remanufactured by the Lycoming factory in 1991, and had operated 869 hours since rebuild and installation in the airframe. No removal and replacement of cylinders was noted in the records.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure and separation of the No. 6 connecting rod end cap, which led to a catastrophic failure of the engine. The fatigue crack initiation was due to galling on the rod end cap, which was most likely caused by an undetermined factory manufacturing process error during the engine rebuild.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA201
- Event ID
- 20001212X18827
- Case number
- LAX99LA201
- 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: c3db16989b0312838d1783d83cd96173afe3933ea01046cefb8501998ca4db6d; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:02:33.679Z.