IAD05LA133 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Republic Airport (FRG) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA133
- 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-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8270M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NYTo Republic Airport (FRG)
- 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, piston › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot leveled the airplane after takeoff, and encountered "a lot of roughness in the engine." The engine rpm fluctuated greatly, the entire airframe vibrated, and the windscreen became covered in oil. The pilot declared an emergency and attempted a return to the departure airport. The engine power continued to decrease, and the airplane could not maintain altitude, so the pilot selected a parking lot for landing. During the landing, the airplane cleared a vehicle in its path, touched down, overran the lot, and collided with two rows of bushes before it came to rest against a sand dune. Examination of the airplane revealed holes in the engine case in the area of the No. 1 exhaust tappet and the No. 3 exhaust tappet. Partial disassembly revealed that the No. 3 piston "split in half" at the oil control ring/piston ring journal, and the No. 1 exhaust valve tappet was broken. Maintenance records revealed that the engine had accumulated 771 hours beyond the manufacturer's recommended 2,000-hour time between overhaul.
Probable cause
A broken piston and exhaust valve tappet which resulted in a total loss of engine power, and a forced landing to unsuitable terrain. A contributing factor was the failure of the operator to overhaul the engine at the manufacturer's recommended interval.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA133
- Event ID
- 20050917X01489
- Case number
- IAD05LA133
- 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: 5853052ae8798295901d6d33e73dfd3f351342f03c4635fe8a145a2b6beb3a70; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:54:33.101Z.