NYC01LA013 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED) to Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA013
- 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
- N4381S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MATo Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY), Vineyard Haven, MA
- 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, connecting rod › Undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Southborough, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in a climb, passing 3,500 feet, when the pilot heard a "bang". The engine lost power, and oil began leaking from the engine compartment. The pilot then made a forced landing on the Massachusetts Turnpike. During the landing flare, the airplane struck highway reflectors, a sign, and an automobile. Examination of the airplane's Lycoming O-360-A4M engine revealed a breach in the casing, in the vicinity of the number 1 piston. In addition, the number 1 piston connecting rod cap was missing, along with one complete rod bolt, and the manufactured head of the other rod bolt. The fracture surfaces were obliterated, and did not provide any clues of fracture event initiation. Type 74502 connecting rods were used in the overhaul of the engine. Since its certification in November 1974, the O-360-A4M engine had always been manufactured utilizing LW-11750 connecting rods. Predecessor O-360 series engines were manufactured using 74502 connecting rods; however, those rods and their immediate successors were superceded by LW-11750 connecting rods in May 1970. The LW-11750 connecting rod had a larger grip area than the 74502, and utilized a longer rod bolt to secure the connecting rod cap to the connecting rod yoke. There was, however, no evidence that the use of the 74502 connecting rod would have resulted in a rod or rod bolt failure. At the time of the accident, the engine's time since overhaul was 50 hours.
Probable cause
A failed connecting rod assembly, with the initiating event undetermined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA013
- Event ID
- 20001212X22237
- Case number
- NYC01LA013
- 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: c1457ee93e5f7a242c715877c1270380ff592690e727cf4e45998a843bed692b; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:22:45.213Z.