ATL03LA143 · Globe GC-1B
Globe GC-1B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Summerville Airport (DYB) to Summerville Airport (DYB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA143
- 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
Globe GC-1B
- Aircraft type
- Globe GC-1
- 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
- N3721K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Summerville Airport (DYB), Summerville, SCTo Summerville Airport (DYB), Summerville, SC
- 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)
- 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 › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during cruise flight the engine began to make a loud "tapping" noise and began to vibrate. As the pilot maneuvered to make an emergency landing on a dirt road, the engine made a loud "bang," lost power, and collided with a gate on rollout,. Examination of the engine revealed that the number 6 connecting rod bearing failed and the connecting rod separated from the crankshaft. Review of the engine records revealed that the engine was removed from the airplane on September 29, 1987, and reinstalled on the airplane on September 22, 1998. There were no records indicating that the engine was stored in accordance with the manufactures service information letter, SIL99-1: Engine preservation for active and stored aircraft.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the failure of the engine # 6 connecting rod bearing. A factor was the collision with a gate.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA143
- Event ID
- 20030929X01607
- Case number
- ATL03LA143
- 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: a291718adbcdc1c6cb25a68e0331f2205b390e6c995de5d2dae7512e64e71282; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:29:56.661Z.