IAD00FA076 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Portsmouth International Airport at Pease (PSM) to Liverpool South Shore Regional Airport (CYAU)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00FA076
- 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
- 2 · 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-32R-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N411JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portsmouth International Airport at Pease (PSM), Portsmouth, NHTo Liverpool South Shore Regional Airport (CYAU), Liverpool
- 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
- 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
- Engine assembly › Seized
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight at 9,000 feet over the ocean when a loud bang was heard from the engine compartment and the windshield was covered with oil. The pilot said that the engine produced partial power before the engine and propeller stopped. The pilot ditched the airplane in the ocean. Examination of the wreckage revealed there was an 8-inch by 5-inch hole in the top of the engine case. The camshaft was exposed and completely fractured aft of the #3 intake lobe. The #4 connecting rod was fractured about mid point. The upper half of the connecting rod was attached to the piston pin, and the piston was staked in the cylinder. The lower half of the #4 connecting rod and its corresponding bearing cap were not attached to the crankshaft, and were not recovered. The #2 and #6 connecting rods displayed heat damage, while the #4 did not. Metallurgical examination of the recovered portions of the #4 connecting rod revealed failure modes consistent with overstress, but no evidence of a primary failure mode was evident on the recovered components. Examination of the engine maintenance records revealed that the #2 cylinder was removed, repaired, and re-installed 1,020 flight hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
Fracture of the #4 connecting rod for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a loss of engine power. A factor was the forced ocean ditching.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00FA076
- Event ID
- 20001212X21747
- Case number
- IAD00FA076
- 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: fff7a02363100b6692fada10d5c53cd1c12d9749be8b72f25d0d8299696bdf75; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:55:25.705Z.