SEA08IA217 · Diamond DA 40
Diamond DA 40 · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From San Carlos Airport (SQL) to San Carlos Airport (SQL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08IA217
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Diamond DA 40
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-40
- 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
- N419JS
- Operator
- Brian Curry
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Carlos Airport (SQL), San Carlos, CATo San Carlos Airport (SQL), San Carlos, CA
- 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 · climb to 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a local area flight when the engine had higher than normal RPMs. The pilot elected to return to the departure airport and his mechanic inspected the airplane. The mechanic discovered a blister in the engine casing and fragments of metal in the oil. The engine was then disassembled and a ball bearing from the propeller governor was located in the engine which had the potential of resulting in a catastrophic engine failure. Examination of the engine showed that the ball bearings from the governor were able to pass through the oil drain hole of the governor. Follow up examinations of the propeller governor showed that the governor bearing race and plunger were assembled with the bearing race set screw and plunger hole misaligned. When the bearing race set screw was torqued down, the set screw tip flattened against the harder plunger surface. During operation, the set screw/plunger race separated.
Probable cause
The improper assembly of the governor during manufacture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08IA217
- Event ID
- 20081017X71017
- Case number
- SEA08IA217
- 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: 2cc0e803d59c84ebe3328ab770b30fd719fa2f85104ae2af01ebef06d2c8765b; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:28:57.105Z.