CHI08CA217 · Grumman G-164A
Grumman G-164A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Crawfordsville Regional Airport (CFJ) to CFJ
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA217
- 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
Grumman G-164A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N9892
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crawfordsville Regional Airport (CFJ), Crawfordsville, INTo CFJ
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
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 had serviced the airplane prior to an aerial application flight of a field during which the airplane lost engine power. The pilot performed a forced landing in a northerly direction on a hard surface road near the field, which had corn along its left side and a pole along its right side. While the pilot was trying to avoid the pole along the right side of the road, the airplane impacted the corn and terrain with its left wing resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. The left and right wings were buckled and bent from the impact. The pilot was uninjured. Examination of the airplane revealed that the oil filler cap was not installed resulting in a total loss of engine oil. The oil filler cap was found in the lower portion of the engine nacelle.
Probable cause
The oil filler cap not reinstalled by the pilot prior to the aerial application flight and the total loss of engine oil during an aerial application. Additional causes were the low altitude of the operation and the unsuitable terrain encountered by the pilot during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA217
- Event ID
- 20080911X01431
- Case number
- CHI08CA217
- 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: 5b59bbc33b4a98c702364ec164b50a1b2fb5c0855f3c2318d083c849fa82f687; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:11:33.461Z.