LAX07LA268 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to Nanaimo Airport (YCD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA268
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N2939J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WATo Nanaimo Airport (YCD), Vancouver Islan
- 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
- Accessory drive assembly, drive gear › Fatigue
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route to the destination airport, the pilot heard the engine generate a loud "bang," as though something had shattered internally. The engine subsequently experienced a total loss of power. The pilot maneuvered the airplane to a pasture where the airplane collided with a fence during the landing roll. According to the engine logbooks, the last engine annual inspection had been performed about 6 months and 124 hours prior to the accident. The left magneto had been replaced about 3 months and 54 hours prior to the accident. A teardown inspection of the engine disclosed that the left idler gear was damaged with several teeth missing and one tooth wedged between the forward face of the gear and crankcase. A detailed metallurgical examination of the left idler gear revealed that it failed due to fatigue. Fatigue features were observed at two locations, and both had initiated in the radius between a gear tooth flank and the root. The gears that were engaged with the idler gear were intact and mostly undamaged. The fracture surface at one fatigue location on the left idler gear was much more reflective than the other. A reflective surface, indicative of a rubbing motion of one fracture surface against another, indicates a misalignment of the meshing gears to produce the motion. The fracture surface at the other location was duller, indicating that little or no rubbing occurred, consistent with the fracture occurring after the first fracture with the rubbed surface. The second fracture propagated until the material below the gear teeth could no longer support the stresses of operation and the portion of the gear located between the two fatigue fractures departed the left idler gear. The fatigue was probably initiated by abnormal contact between the left idler gear and the other mating gears, with the relatively recent installation of the left magneto gear being suspect as the likely source of the initiating stressors.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the fatigue failure of the left idler gear. Inadequate maintenance installation of the recently installed left magneto was also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA268
- Event ID
- 20070908X01332
- Case number
- LAX07LA268
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-08-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dfec5753972f89aacc2e75f225799c21d44c6ff96cb61e12737e490c05f3fd6b; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:29:51.811Z.