NYC04LA201 · PZL 101
PZL 101 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Swanton, VT (no airport) to Upper Cumberland Regional Airport (SRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA201
- 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
PZL 101
- Aircraft type
- PZL 101
- 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
- N123LZ
- Operator
- Robert Langford
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Swanton, VT (no airport)To Upper Cumberland Regional Airport (SRB), Sparta, TN
- 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, crankshaft › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 20 minutes after takeoff, the engine "locked up" without warning. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field, and during the landing, the airplane impacted a ditch, substantially damaging the airplane. Examination of the radial engine revealed that the crankshaft was fractured. Additionally, as the propeller was rotated, an "audible crunching sound" was heard from the accessory gearbox. Fuel was observed in both fuel tanks and fuel continuity was confirmed to the engine. The oil sump was empty; however, a significant amount of oil was observed under the engine. Additionally, the oil tank was ruptured, and the amount of oil could not be determined.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to the fractured crankshaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA201
- Event ID
- 20040909X01376
- Case number
- NYC04LA201
- 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: 501a235d6490c222d2e20d6c192fb062a77082450e99c0ac29c92baf979ea7c9; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:48:54.019Z.