FTW00LA067 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Telluride Regional Airport (TEX) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA067
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N87NF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Telluride Regional Airport (TEX), Telluride, COTo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was cruising at flight level 270 (27,000 feet) in dark night IMC, when the pilot heard a 'muffled thump,' from the engine. He observed an 'immediate loss of power (torque 0/ng 20%),' declared an emergency to ATC, and was advised of the nearest airport. He attempted one air restart and two electrical restarts, but was unsuccessful. During the ensuing forced landing, the airplane entered VFR conditions descending through 5,000 feet, and came to rest in a field, in 3-5 feet of standing water, southeast of the airport. A review of the downloaded data from the engine trend monitor and examination of the engine and its components by Pratt and Whitney did not reveal any pre-impact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation prior to the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for an undetermined reason. A factor was the dark night light condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA067
- Event ID
- 20001212X20364
- Case number
- FTW00LA067
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-01-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 99b5d4b0fe5c2eb848b36c18a0f077de6da4f0041958a8b6b41a072dab1d6192; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:27:29.690Z.