CHI02LA100 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Saint Paul Downtown Holman Field (STP) to Red Wing Regional Airport (RGK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA100
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9184F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Saint Paul Downtown Holman Field (STP), St. Paul, MNTo Red Wing Regional Airport (RGK), Red Wing, MN
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly › Failure, total
- Engine assembly, piston › Failure, total
- Engine assembly, piston › Fatigue
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during a forced landing on a road after a loss of engine power. The pilot reported he was in cruise flight at 3,000 feet when he noticed a slight surging of the engine and observed fluctuations in the manifold pressure. About 30 seconds to one minute after the surging stopped, the engine power suddenly reduced to no more than idle power and was running very rough. Then the engine lost all power. The pilot executed a forced landing to a paved road, but the airplane veered left off the road and the left wing hit a small tree. The engine inspection revealed the connecting rods for cylinders 3, 4, and 5 were all broken loose from the crankshaft, and these three crank journals showed evidence of extreme heat. The inspection revealed that the number 6 piston had a fatigue fracture across the piston crown structure in line with the piston pin. A hole was burned in the piston near the center of the crown along a fracture line, to the piston interior. The origin of this fracture was the crown surface. No number stamp or defects were observed at the fracture origin site. The inspection of the piston revealed that no material defects or surface anomalies were present at the origin of the larger fatigue crack, and that base metal composition of the piston was consistent with alloy AE109 specification. The engine manufacturer reported that it was in the process of redesigning the piston used in the 310 horsepower TSIO-550-C engines.
Probable cause
The engine failure due to oil starvation as a result of the fatigue fracture of the number 6 piston. Additional factors were the unsuitable terrain for landing encountered by the pilot, and the inadequate piston design by the manufacturer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA100
- Event ID
- 20020408X00471
- Case number
- CHI02LA100
- 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, coordinates. 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: dd76ff0cbb6441cc6ece6ed4ab57dc989fbe07e56117ddd8309cad7e9012c858; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:01:20.289Z.