SEA08LA162 · Sport Flight Talon XP
Sport Flight Talon XP · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From X40 · Inverness, FL to X40
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08LA162
- 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
Sport Flight Talon XP
- Aircraft type
- Sport Flight TALON XP
- 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
- N1856P
- Operator
- James J. Wolfe · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From X40 · Inverness, FLTo X40
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were departing on a local instructional flight. During the initial climb, the engine lost power and the airplane impacted trees short of the runway. Post accident examination showed that the lower rod bearing had failed due to corrosion. The failed bearing then impacted the crankcase causing a crack, and subsequent loss of compression. The manufacturer's records indicate that the engine was manufactured in 1994 and sold to the original owner in 1995. The pilot had purchased the engine less than a year prior to the accident and it was sold as "rebuilt," with the work purported to have been accomplished in 2007. However, there was no supporting documentation available. The engine manufacturers representative indicated that the engine was not maintained/serviced in accordance with the manufacturer's guidelines, which in part call for the replacement of the crankshaft every 5 years. There was no evidence that the crankshaft had been replaced since the date of engine manufacture.
Probable cause
The lower rod bearing failed due to corrosion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08LA162
- Event ID
- 20080722X01100
- Case number
- SEA08LA162
- 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: c2b3be7e9825d1425736cda5fcfc16a4072732c8a27ff57cfadf933069dd7c3c; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:56:39.453Z.