CHI84LA359 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK) to Fort Frances Municipal Airport (YAG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI84LA359
- 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-32-260
- 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
- N5541J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK), Crystal Lake, ILTo Fort Frances Municipal Airport (YAG), Fort Frances
- 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 › Overtemperature
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH THE TERRAIN DURING A FORCED LANDING. THE WX WAS VMC & NO FLT PLAN WAS FILED. DURING THE FORCED LANDING IN A FARM FIELD THE RIGHT MAIN GEAR WAS SHEARED OFF AND THE NOSE GEAR BENT. THE LEFT WING WAS ALSO SUBSTANTIALLYDAMAGED. THE ENGINE WAS INSPECTED AFTER THE ACCIDENT & THE OIL FILTER WAS FOUND TO CONTAIN FINE CHIPS OF ALUMINUM. THE OIL PUMP APPEARED TO BE OPERABLE. ALL SIX CONNECTING ROD BEARINGS WERE HEAT SCORCHED. THE PLT REPORTED THAT SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF AT AN ALT OF 3000 FT MSL THE ENG BEGAN RUNNING ROUGH. HE SAID HE HEADED BACK TO ARPT OF ORIGIN BUT EN ROUTE THE ENGINE LOST ALL POWER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI84LA359
- Event ID
- 20001214X40648
- Case number
- CHI84LA359
- 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: b5eba2a5af1e9ab7b97629c77cfbec3d83da99c5615ec48bb8b6a3cc7a87c03a; retrieved 2026-09-23T19:39:26.877Z.