IAD01LA107 · Piper PA-32RT-300T
Piper PA-32RT-300T · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during takeoff
From Medina Municipal Airport (1G5) to Holmes County Airport (10G)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01LA107
- 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
Piper PA-32RT-300T
- 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
- N39945
- Operator
- Westline Construction
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Medina Municipal Airport (1G5), Medina, OHTo Holmes County Airport (10G), HOLMES COUNTY, OH
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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, magneto › Fatigue
- Ignition system, magneto › Previous damage
- Ignition system, magneto › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After take-off, the pilot heard the engine "pop" followed by a loss of engine power, which resulted in a forced landing into trees. Examination of the engine revealed that a newly installed factory remanufactured single-drive dual magneto had separated from the engine. It had accumulated 17.9 hours at the time of the accident. Examination of the magneto and the installed clamping blocks revealed that the mounting flanges on both sides of the distributor housing exhibited fatigue beach marks. Examination of the mounting flanges also revealed that there were two sets of contact marks. The smaller more linear inboard set of marks matched the contour of the installed magneto clamping blocks when tilted slightly. These marks only penetrated slightly into the surface of the flanges. The installed clamping blocks appeared to meet the shape and dimensional requirements of older style clamping blocks issued by the engine manufacturer. The other marks were wider with curved ends that did not match any feature of the older style installed clamping blocks. A small step was apparent at the edge of the larger contact area indicating removal or displacement of material from the surface. The marks did however appear to match the configuration and shape for newer style clamping blocks introduced by the engine manufacturer on engines produced after March 1985. According to the engine manufacturer, the change was instituted as a production product improvement and the use of the newer clamping blocks was not a mandatory requirement on the engine installed in this airplane. According to the magneto manufacturer, the magneto housings are stripped of paint and dipped into a dichromate bath for corrosion prevention during the remanufacturing process. They were subjected to an inspection for cracks, but the inspection was only visual.
Probable cause
fatigue failure of the dual magneto mounting flanges that resulted from undetected contact damage sustained during a previous installation, which resulted in its separation from the engine during take-off.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01LA107
- Event ID
- 20011001X02018
- Case number
- IAD01LA107
- 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: e0eb67893261791acf33b9987efb6133978387db00486bcd072e8836d110c9f2; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:48:53.993Z.