CHI00LA211 · Piper PA-36-285
Piper PA-36-285 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Pembina Municipal Airport (PMB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA211
- 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-36-285
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N11A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pembina Municipal Airport (PMB), Pembina, NDTo 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
- 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
- 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
- Reduction gear assembly › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning to the airport when the engine failed. A subsequent landing in a wheat field resulted. The pilot said, "After pulling out of field I felt an abnormal vibration, I pulled the throttle back 100 rpm and it seemed OK. After only approximately 1/2 mile the engine shook violently and quit." The aircraft was powered by a Continental 6-285 "Tiara" geared engine. A postaccident examination revealed that the prop driver gear shaft on the engine was protruding out of the front of the engine approximately one inch further than normal. The engine could not be rotated by hand. No other engine or airframe anomalies were detected that could be associated with a preexisting condition.
Probable cause
the failure of the engine reduction gear assembly. Factors were the low altitude when the failure occurred and the crops.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA211
- Event ID
- 20001212X21194
- Case number
- CHI00LA211
- 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: 6b5c92774bc45482201aa12808b631c372e3ca88b6759e8fa51b37b45554f909; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:45:34.318Z.