CHI99LA183 · Grumman American G-164B
Grumman American G-164B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From Goodland Municipal Airport (GLD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA183
- 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
Grumman American G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American G-164
- 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
- N6515K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Goodland Municipal Airport (GLD)To not recorded
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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, rocker arm/tappet › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that while spraying a corn field, he had exited the field, began to pull up and turn to the east when he noticed a vibration. He stated that he continued the maneuver during which he saw oil from the number eight cylinder leaking onto the exhaust of the engine. He added that at 3/4 through the turn, the engine's rocker arm shaft began to 'work its way out'. He stated the engine was not developing power, so he elected to land on a north-south access road that was approximately 15 feet in width; the sides of which were elevated approximately 2 feet in height. He reported that during the landing attempt, the aircraft's left wing impacted the wheat, the aircraft rotated 180 degrees and the right landing gear separated from the aircraft. The aircraft continued in a rearward direction into the wheat field. The pilot reported that there was an inch of rainfall the previous day. The rocker arm bolt was fractured at the location of a cotter pin hole.
Probable cause
the fracture of the rocker arm bolt. Contributing factors were the pilot's low altitude and the crops.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA183
- Event ID
- 20001212X18944
- Case number
- CHI99LA183
- 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: 34cdd378a9a1de7cb2b1fd1e9fd8bf993b6d62b00ac4f626fa6da56a819c2941; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:54:10.069Z.