NYC88LA053 · Piper PA-28RT
Piper PA-28RT · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From FREDRICTON to TORANTI
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC88LA053
- 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-28RT
- 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
- CGRQU
- Operator
- Brian Downey
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From FREDRICTONTo TORANTI
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure, total
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Houlton, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING A PERSONAL TRANSPORTATION FLIGHT TO QUEBEC CITY IN CANADA AND WHILE CRUISING AT ABOUT 6500 FEET, THE AIRCRAFT EXPERIENCED AN OIL PRESSURE LIGHT ILLUMINATION, 43 NAUTICAL MILES NNW OF HOULTON VOR ON A 306 DEGREE HEADING. THE ENGINE THEN STARTED TO RUN ROUGH AND EVENTUALLY LOST POWER. EMERGENCY WAS DECLARED AND THE AIRCRAFT LANDED ON ITS BELLY ON A LOGGING ROAD. THE RIGHT WING HIT A TREE STUMP, THE AIRCRAFT WAS DESTROYED. INVEST REVEALED THAT #1 CONNECTING ROD HAD FAILED. THE ENG SHOWED SIGNS OF HEAT DISTRESS AROUND THE #1 ROD. THE ACFT HAD OIL ON THE SIDES AND BOTTOM OF THE FUSELAGE. THERE WAS ALSO A HOLE IN THE TOP REAR OF THE ENG.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC88LA053
- Event ID
- 20001213X32774
- Case number
- NYC88LA053
- 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: 626b12ca14b79ace59b7c224a1982a078c0058afe4775a421663e0f1749f1094; retrieved 2026-09-23T11:26:29.444Z.