CHI04LA187 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW) to Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA187
- 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
Beech A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N3248T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW), Mason City, IATo Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD), Sioux Falls, SD
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged during a forced landing on a road. The pilot reported that while in level flight the engine "blew up." He executed a forced landing on a road and elected to delay lowering of the landing gear until the airplane had cleared a car that was traveling in the opposite direction. Once clear of the car, the pilot lowered the landing gear, but it did not fully extend due to the low altitude. Examination of the engine revealed a hole in the crankcase adjacent to the number 6 connecting rod journal. Additionally, the number 6 connecting rod and piston were found fractured. No determination could be made regarding the failure of the connecting rod.
Probable cause
The failure of the connecting rod which resulted in the loss of engine power during cruise flight and subsequent forced landing. A contributing factor was the delayed lowering of the landing gear in order to clear the other vehicle encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA187
- Event ID
- 20040715X00986
- Case number
- CHI04LA187
- 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: efef43f39db472de0c115fc34d09df2d60f541d1cfe74bc370431e4176bc0a39; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:11:45.369Z.