CHI00LA274 · Widner PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER PIETENPOL
Widner PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER PIETENPOL · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Chandler Field (AXN) to Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA274
- 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
Widner PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER PIETENPOL
- Aircraft type
- Widner PIETENPOL AIRCAMPER
- 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
- N89JW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chandler Field (AXN), Alexandria, MNTo Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MN
- 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
- Partial 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Object › Tree(s)
- Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area › Encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed during a forced landing after a loss of engine power while in cruise flight. The pilot said that, at about 2 hours into the flight, he, "...heard, or felt a single jolt or retort. The plane continued to function normally. A short time later it began to smell 'hot' in the cockpit. Gauges were normal... Almost immediately I noted my cylinder head temperature had climbed to 400 [degrees] F." The pilot said that he subsequently saw blue smoke from the left side of the engine and it began to run rough. The pilot attempted to land in a "weed" field. He said that during the landing he, "...was approaching the trees at the end of the field so I side slipped to the ground striking the [right] wing, then the nose and coming to rest facing the direction I came from." The pilot reported that subsequent to the accident, he found that the number 4 cylinder and piston were damaged. He found the cylinder cracked and the piston skirt broken. He reported the extent of the damage to the aircraft as "destroyed". The pilot reported no other anomalies.
Probable cause
The trees and the unsuitable terrain for landing encountered during the forced landing. Factors were the side slip to avoid the trees initiated by the pilot, the fractured piston, and the cracked cylinder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA274
- Event ID
- 20001212X21691
- Case number
- CHI00LA274
- 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 2000-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: be44a9e938f845299cb8f6774d25e245f1cfad71c1fdefebf58f90dc72d9f64e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:06:06.114Z.