NYC08LA317 · Sorrell Aircraft Skybolt
Sorrell Aircraft Skybolt · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Gene Snyder Airport (K62) to K62
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA317
- 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
Sorrell Aircraft Skybolt
- Aircraft type
- Sorrell SKYBOLT
- 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
- N3EG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gene Snyder Airport (K62), Falmouth, KYTo K62
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 2,000 feet the engine suddenly stopped producing power. The pilot and passenger, wearing parachutes, elected to parachute to the ground. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the pilot leave the airplane approximately 10 to 15 seconds after the passenger departed and after placing the airplane in a nose dive. The airplane impacted a rectangular farm field and the pilot and passenger suffered serious injuries due to the low altitude in which they parachuted from. The airplane had been purchased by the accident pilot approximately one month prior to the accident. According to the airplane's engine maintenance log, on April 28, 2004, the engine had undergone a preservation process called "pickling." The process utilized 10 quarts of pickling oil and the engine was placed in storage. On May 9, 2006 the engine was drained of the pickling oil and replaced with 7 quarts of 50 WT oil. The cylinders were drained and cleaned, and then the engine was test ran. The NTSB Materials laboratory examined components of the engine and analyzed an unknown substance within the lubricating journals of the camshaft and crankshaft. The compounds of the unknown substance was those found in corrosion preservation fluids also known as pickling fluids and are not found in lubricating oil. The presence of these compounds indicates that it was likely that some pickling fluids were still in the engine at the time of the accident; however, a specific pickling fluid could not be determined. According to the engine manufacturer, pickling fluid has been known to clog lubrication channels by forming a tarry residue when present in engines for prolonged periods and result in oil starvation. The number 2 main bearing and piston were thermally damaged and that thermal damage is consistent with oil starvation. Therefore it is possible that the residual pickling fluid clogged the lubrication channels for the number 2 position resulting in oil starvation.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to oil starvation as a result of improper servicing (removal of preserving fluid) of the engine after it had been returned from storage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA317
- Event ID
- 20081003X17836
- Case number
- NYC08LA317
- 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. 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: 3ef58241aac78eab6589be95280ee97071333646dd9fbeeeb4ecd49ab1516ede; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:19:14.672Z.