NYC00LA008 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB) to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA008
- 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-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N56094
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB), Ocean City, MDTo Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, DC
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, static
- 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, valve, exhaust › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the third flight of the day, the engine started without difficulty and no anomalies observed. The pilot taxied onto the runway, advanced the throttle, and executed a normal takeoff. The airplane climbed to a cruise altitude of approximately 2,000 feet msl. After reaching 2,000 feet, the engine started running rough, and the airplane started to descend. The pilot attempted a forced landing to a road, but struck wires while maneuvering to avoid a construction vehicle. The number 3-cylinder exhaust valve stem was found fractured into two pieces, and evidence of a fatigue crack on the fracture surface was identified. The engine was remanufacture to zero time on October 10, 1979, and then installed on January 10, 1981. At the time of the accident, the engine had approximately 1,325 hours of operation and 20 years since overhaul. A service instruction published by the engine manufacture recommends that the engine be overhauled every 2,000 hours or 12 years which ever comes first.
Probable cause
The failure of the number 3-cylinder exhaust valve stem due to fatigue cracking.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA008
- Event ID
- 20001212X20031
- Case number
- NYC00LA008
- 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: 75a751ac25985176baefafad37277320679877581f67b3a0e45d0b3c37201f50; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:49:10.109Z.