ATL03FA025 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Columbus Heliport (OH52) to Thomasville Regional Airport (TVI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA025
- 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
- 4 · 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-32-300
- 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
- N47420
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbus Heliport (OH52), Columbus, OHTo Thomasville Regional Airport (TVI), Thomasville, GA
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Seized
- 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
During an instrument cross-country flight from Columbus Ohio, the pilot declared an emergency. Approach control gave the pilot a heading to the nearest airport and asked for the nature of the emergency. The pilot advised approach control that he had total lost of engine power, and would not be able to make the airport. According to the passenger the engine stopped and the pilot attempted to restart the engine. The pilot told the passengers to brace themselves because they were going to hit some trees. The airplane collided with trees and came to rest in a heavily wooded area. Examination of the internal engine case revealed scoring damage, and the connecting rods and pistons showed signs of heat distress. Approximately half a quart of engine oil was recovered from the 12 quart engine oil system. Metal debris was also retrieved from the oil sump. The engine compartment and nose section of the airplane sustained fire damage. According to a line mechanic at the departure airport, he noticed an oil leak coming from under the engine cowling onto the nose wheel pant during the servicing of a gear strut. The oil leak was pointed out to the pilot, and the pilot told the mechanic that he would look into it later.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA025
- Event ID
- 20021226X05633
- Case number
- ATL03FA025
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-12-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4dbb8cb6eb21b11d01401c42dd4340a59964ac1f63b3e3d14d6009a61656b59f; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:33:08.833Z.