CEN09LA132 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA-5B · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Reid-Eash Airport (25IN) to Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA132
- 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 American AVN. CORP. AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N28862
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Eash Airport (25IN), Howe, INTo Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH), Goshen, IN
- 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 airplane was in cruise flight when the pilot heard a "loud bang followed by a violent vibration." He secured the engine and executed a forced landing to an open field. A postaccident examination revealed that a 20-inch length of one of the propeller blades had separated. Metallurgical examination revealed a fatigue failure of the propeller blade initiating from an area of corrosion. Corrosion pitting was observed over the entire cambered surface of the blade. The propeller had accumulated 2,326 hours total time in service. The most recent annual inspection was completed approximately 2 months prior to the accident. Federal Aviation Administration publications and the manufacturer's documentation recommended a detailed visual inspection of the propeller for corrosion during an aircraft annual inspection.
Probable cause
A loss of engine thrust due to the separation of a section of one of the propeller blades as a result of fatigue failure of the propeller because of corrosion. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the mechanic to detect and address the propeller corrosion during the annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA132
- Event ID
- 20090114X13825
- Case number
- CEN09LA132
- 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: 3a3f36373c601c314faab8478be9e0cd90ba6481a937fa03b4f2e976adb772a8; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:41:20.517Z.