NYC01LA226 · Murray JN4-D
Murray JN4-D · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Albert Airport (1N3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA226
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Murray JN4-D
- Aircraft type
- Murray JN4
- 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
- N176TP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albert Airport (1N3), Philipsburg, PATo not recorded
- 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
- Ignition system, ignition coil › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Once the airplane was on the runway, the pilot advanced the throttle, the engine responded, and within 300 feet the airplane was airborne. After tracking runway heading for about 1/2 mile, the pilot turned the airplane into the wind to improve climb performance. "Shortly" after completing the turn, and while approximately 400 feet agl, the engine suddenly lost power. The pilot lowered the nose to maintain airspeed, and executed a 180-degree turn to maneuver for a cornfield that was behind the airplane. Because of some power lines bordering the field, the pilot elected to proceed directly to it and land with a tailwind. The pilot flew the airplane just above the field, trading airspeed to maintain altitude. When the airplane started to stall, the pilot let it settle into the field. The left wing contacted the corn, which was 10 feet tall. The airplane's nose dropped, and the airplane impacted the ground nose low. The airplane came to a stop upright, and both occupants exited. The engine was from a 1986 Subaru that was involved in an automobile accident. The engine had approximately 9,000 miles on it at the time of the automobile accident, and 93.6 flight hours in the accident airplane. Examination of the engine revealed no preimpact failures or malfunctions except for a defective ignition coil.
Probable cause
Failure of the ignition coil, which resulted in a loss of engine power. A factor was the 10-foot corn in the forced landing field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA226
- Event ID
- 20011001X02017
- Case number
- NYC01LA226
- 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: 4b6bf0ce94749994691ae7f4bb6497aabe878c6be867673a9153f9b6e65c7831; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:49:39.870Z.