NYC00LA146 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Pine Valley Airport (19N) to AIY · Atlantic City, NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA146
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N4319U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pine Valley Airport (19N), Berlin, NJTo AIY · Atlantic City, NJ
- 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
- 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, transmission
- 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
- Lubricating system, oil quickdrain/drain plug › Missing
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Williamstown, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While cruising at 2,000 feet, the pilot noticed the oil pressure light first flicker, then come on steady. A few seconds later, the airplane started to vibrate. During an off airport landing in a field, the airplane struck a power line prior to impacting in an open field. Examination of the engine revealed the engine oil drain plug was missing from the oil sump, and there was no oil in the engine. The engine had accumulated 72 hours since a factory overhaul. Twenty hours after the engine was installed in the airplane, an oil change was performed. The mechanic, who performed the oil change, reported a quick drain was installed, but said he did not notice if it was safety wired, nor did he know who installed the quick drain. The airplane owner/mechanic who performed the engine installation declined to talk to the Safety Board investigator about the quick drain installation. Textron-Lycoming reported they overhauled the engine and delivered it with two standard drain plugs and no quick drains installed.
Probable cause
improper installation of a quick drain plug by the airplane owner/mechanic which resulted in a loss of engine oil and forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA146
- Event ID
- 20001212X21110
- Case number
- NYC00LA146
- 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: 7339c7d255d4a1f86d042432347ae81317c6c1fc170286f29852449d07f4f1d1; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:12:58.280Z.