LAX05LA152 · Grumman G-164A
Grumman G-164A · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Yuba City, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA152
- 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
Grumman G-164A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N5304
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuba City, CATo not recorded
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial 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, cylinder › Cracked
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff initial climb, the pilot heard a loud bang followed by a partial loss of engine power, and made an emergency landing on a dry rice field. The airplane landed hard, sheared off the landing gear, and tumbled before coming to rest on its belly. The post accident engine inspection revealed that the number 7 cylinder was cracked along the cylinder fins and around the top and bottom spark plug holes. The cylinder was removed revealing a crack along the inside portion of the combustion chamber of the cylinder head from spark plug hole to spark plug hole in-between the intake and exhaust valves. The engine logbooks entries did not show removal of the number 7 cylinder at any time between the last overhaul in 1999 and the date of the accident. The last inspection took place 5 months prior to the accident. The reasons for the cracks were not determined.
Probable cause
a partial loss of engine power due to multiple cracks in the number 7 cylinder. The reasons for the cracks were not determined
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA152
- Event ID
- 20050506X00567
- Case number
- LAX05LA152
- 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: 630e76b0abab5d76055867e9608d1e1b69a9e3f36ff43d958656cbf2b92aad50; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:59:20.586Z.