CHI05LA045 · Pilatus PC-12/45
Greenhill Aviation Pilatus PC-12/45 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From South Bend International Airport (SBN) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA045
- 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
Pilatus PC-12/45
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus PC-12
- 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
- N922RG
- Operator
- Greenhill Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Bend International Airport (SBN), South Bend, INTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
- 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, fuel control › Failure
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot stated that shortly after takeoff, the engine "abruptly and smoothly rolled back." Movement of the power control lever had no effect. He stated that use of the manual override (MOR) system did not restore engine power. He secured the engine and executed a forced landing on a roadway. The airplane's wing struck two utility poles during rollout. Data downloaded from the accident aircraft indicated that the recorded engine interstage turbine temperature (ITT) exceeded published limits during the event. The post accident engine inspection revealed turbine damage consistent with an over-temperature event. The inspection also revealed a leak in the compressor discharge pressure (CDP) sensor bellows within the fuel control unit (FCU). The leak prevented the bellows assembly from responding to throttle inputs and resulted in the FCU providing minimum fuel flow to the engine regardless of the throttle setting. Following this accident an improved FCU design which incorporated a more robust bellows design was released and retrofited into the entire in-service and production fleet. The airframe manufacturer issued a revision to the pilot's operating handbook to provide an improved procedure for use in the event of an in-flight engine power loss. It also updated information regarding the Manual Override (MOR) system.
Probable cause
Failure of the fuel control unit (FCU) bellows which resulted in a significant loss of engine power and the pilot's encounter with unsuitable terrain during the subsequent forced landing. A contributing factor was the pilot's inadvertent exceedence of the engine temperature limitations during use of the manual override (MOR) system. Additional factors were the roadway and the utility poles struck during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA045
- Event ID
- 20041216X01999
- Case number
- CHI05LA045
- 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: 0b594701236305747752cd88b5233b596b40937b94421cdc1c11f3488693ad4c; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:26:04.888Z.