NYC00LA061 · Zielke RV-4
Zielke RV-4 · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA061
- 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
Zielke RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Zielke RV-4
- 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
- N8ZZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo 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 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- 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
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Failure
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
About 30 minutes after takeoff, the pilot felt a 'buzz,' which lasted approximately 2 seconds. The airplane then shook violently, so the pilot retarded the throttle to reduce the shaking. He then turned the magnetos off, one at a time, and reapplied power, but the shaking returned with each power application. Carburetor heat was also applied, with no effect. The pilot then tried to add enough power to maintain altitude, but still found that its application resulted in violent shaking. Power was again reduced to keep the airplane controllable. The pilot attempted to guide the airplane to a nearby airport, but could not hold altitude, and headed for a plowed field. He tried to align the airplane with the furrows, but was unable to due to the approach angle. Upon touchdown, the landing gear collapsed, and the wing spars were damaged. During post-flight examination, part of one of the wooden propeller blades was found to be missing. There was no evidence of a bird strike. The propeller had been bolted onto the hub with the correct torque's, and the cowling had been found securely fastened to the airframe. The engine was also examined, with no significant anomalies noted, and there was no indication of airframe flutter.
Probable cause
Failure of one of the propeller blades. A factor was the necessity land across, rather than in alignment with, the furrowed terrain due to the nature of the emergency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA061
- Event ID
- 20001212X20316
- Case number
- NYC00LA061
- 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: b0f85cae5515b633becd89aab782ed032f9952212816731e0e0f29026b79fc65; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:19:42.120Z.