CHI08LA160 · Piper PA-44-180
Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08LA160
- 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N159WM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL), Battle Creek, MITo 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 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The twin-engine airplane sustained substantial damage due to a separated propeller blade tip impacting the airplane's nose during cruise. The tip separation exhibited signs of fatigue failure. Witness marks consistent with tool file marks made during a leading edge repair were found at the area of the origin of fatigue. According to maintenance information published by the propeller manufacturer, a 10x magnifying glass should be used to examine repairs to ensure damage, file marks, and any course surface finish are removed prior to returning the propeller back to service.. The airplane accumulated a total time of 1,997 hours.
Probable cause
The in-flight separation of the tip of a propeller blade due to metal fatigue that resulted from an inadequate inspection and repair.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08LA160
- Event ID
- 20080613X00856
- Case number
- CHI08LA160
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: d363378f4a3c80589c88088d260541cae2b3b9e3df91ed5a9acb90dfa6bade03; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:46:11.337Z.