NYC87LA245 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From N34 · PROSPECTVILLE, PA to N34
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC87LA245
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N596SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N34 · PROSPECTVILLE, PATo N34
- 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 · climb to 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 › Failure, total
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
- Lubricating system, oil line › Leak
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHILE CLIMBING THROUGH ABOUT 1500' AFTER TAKEOFF, THE ENGINE BEGAN TO LOSE POWER. THE PILOT TURNED BACK TOWARD THE AIRPORT, BUT SUBSEQUENTLY ALL POWER WAS LOST & THE AIRCRAFT WAS DAMAGED DURING A LANDING IN A CORN FIELD. A POST- ACCIDENT EXAMINATION REVEALED THE OIL LINE BETWEEN THE ENGINE AND OIL COOLER HAD FAILED. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE NUMBER 2 CONNECTING ROD FAILED DUE TO OIL STARVATION. THE OIL LINE HAD 1613 HRS OF OPERATION. PIPER SERVICE BULLETIN NUMBER 531 RECOMMENDED THE OIL LINE BE CHANGED AFTER 1000 HOURS OF OPERATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC87LA245
- Event ID
- 20001213X32190
- Case number
- NYC87LA245
- 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 1987-09-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 47aa4788b5639224ce174e266b76c2a2590b5989bc19812cfdde3290684b8c10; retrieved 2026-09-23T12:13:52.009Z.