CHI00LA209 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Major Gilbert Field Airport (4R5) to John F Kennedy Memorial Airport (ASX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA209
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N24GK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Major Gilbert Field Airport (4R5), LA POINTE, WITo John F Kennedy Memorial Airport (ASX)
- 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
- Lubricating system, oil port/passage, internal › Blocked(partial)
- Object › Fence
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane began to lose engine power during a cruise climb from an island based airport. Power was regained and the pilot diverted to an airport located 8.5 nm to the south at an altitude of 2,600 msl. Five miles from the airport, the engine began to run rough and the pilot began flying best glide airspeed. At 3.5 nm from the airport, smoke emanated from the engine cowling at which point the engine seized. The airplane impacted a barbed wire fence 200 yards from the approach end of the runway 20. Examination of the Textron Lycoming O-360-A4M engine revealed an abrasive material, similar to that used during the engine manufacturing process, was present in the oil passages from the main gallery to the one and two main bearings.
Probable cause
the blocked lubricating system and unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA209
- Event ID
- 20001212X21400
- Case number
- CHI00LA209
- 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: 5920229697b6ae6300392256b58ad076ec71497079d6795a0b54d9145cdd7abe; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:40:47.598Z.