LAX04LA084 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Oceanside Municipal Airport (OKB) to Big Bear City Airport (L35)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA084
- 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-32R-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
- N589Q
- Operator
- Michael Woodin
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oceanside Municipal Airport (OKB), Oceanside, CATo Big Bear City Airport (L35), BIG BEAR, CA
- 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
- Company/operator management › Maintenance, compliance with ad, not performed
- Lubricating system, oil gasket › Ruptured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a catastrophic engine failure in cruise, the airplane collided with multiple ground obstacles during a forced landing in a field. The pilot reported that while in cruise flight he first noticed a "burning smell," which was followed a short time later by a low oil pressure indication. The pilot then felt a vibration, followed by a brief engine overspeed to 3,000 rpm, and then the engine lost all power. He performed a forced landing in a field and collided with multiple ground obstacles. Post accident examination of the engine at the accident site revealed that the No. 6 connecting rod had penetrated the engine crank case. An excess of engine oil was found on the bottom of the airplane. Further examination revealed an oil filter gasket, Lycoming part number LW-13388, was extruded at the base of the filter assembly and had allowed virtually all engine oil to escape. A Lycoming Mandatory Service Bulletin MSB-543, and an emergency Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2000-18-53, that was later superceded by AD 2002-12-17, was applicable to this potential problem, and required repetitive inspections and gasket replacement or replacement of the gasket adapter plate with a different part number. The investigation could find no evidence of compliance with either AD.
Probable cause
engine oil exhaustion due to the extrusion of an oil filter converter plate gasket and the failure of the aircraft owner to comply with a mandatory Service Bulletin and a Federal Aviation Administration emergency Airworthiness Directive.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA084
- Event ID
- 20040106X00021
- Case number
- LAX04LA084
- 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: fa97348594948c01d905be8fe865237e34d426c6a03092045d0605ace5df3956; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:02:47.116Z.