DEN06LA040 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to Crownpoint Airport (0E8)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06LA040
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N9149W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NMTo Crownpoint Airport (0E8), Crownpoint, NM
- 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, camshaft › Fractured
- Ignition system, magneto › Jammed
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 reported that "approximately 25 minutes into the flight, the engine quit - 2,350 rpm to zero rpm reading." The pilot attempted to restart the engine but the engine would not start. The pilot then executed a forced landing to a dirt road. The pilot said, "We touched down with the road veering slightly to the right and bounced once becoming airborne again. The plane yawed to the right and when I straightened the aircraft we touched down a second time left of center on the dirt road and shoulder. The bar ditch had been graded so as to drain into the field adjacent to the road. When we struck the perpendicular ditch, the nose gear gave way forcing us to a stop." An on-scene examination of the airplane showed the nose wheel broken aft, the lower cowling crushed upward, the engine and engine mounts bent upward, and the lower firewall bent upward and aft. Flight control continuity was confirmed. An examination of the airplane's engine showed the left magneto impulse coupling broken and the magneto drive gear jammed. The adjacent camshaft gear showed 4 broken teeth. Milled metal was found around the drive coupling and camshaft gear. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
The jammed magneto drive gear and the fractured camshaft gear, which resulted in the total engine failure. A factor contributing to the accident was the unsuitable dirt road on which the pilot had to force land the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06LA040
- Event ID
- 20060223X00220
- Case number
- DEN06LA040
- 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: 97c2f96442920f3c2ac39e14801dbbd15f6066297a79be2a272ff225e5699d4c; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:06:07.823Z.