ERA10FA074 · Piper PA-28R-200
Ayalon Flight Services Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Orange County Airport (MGJ) to Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA074
- 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
- 2 · 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
Piper PA-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N345AT
- Operator
- Ayalon Flight Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orange County Airport (MGJ), Montgomery, NYTo Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CT
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 10 minutes after takeoff, the pilot advised air traffic control that he was experiencing an oil problem and subsequently maneuvered the airplane for an emergency landing at an airport about 7 nautical miles away. The engine ceased producing power shortly thereafter and the airplane subsequently impacted trees and terrain during a forced landing. Metallurgical examination of the engine components attributed the loss of engine power to the failure of the No. 3 connecting rod bearing. Measurement of journal diameters were consistent with the correct bearings having been installed and a lack of substantial debris in the No. 4 bearing suggested that oil contamination was not contributory. The deformation and color of the recovered No. 3 connecting rod bearing pieces were consistent with the backing of the bearing extruding out of the connecting rod journal interface while under lubrication, and was consistent with failure due to delamination of the bearing. Damage to the bearing from continued operation after it failed prevented a conclusive determination as to whether the bearing had been damaged by a brief period of reduced oil pressure or wear over time. The engine was overhauled about 18 years and 1,700 flight hours prior to the accident. Maintenance records for that period showed inconsistent documentation of manufacturer-recommended oil filter element inspections following engine oil changes, with no documented oil suction screen or filter inspections in the 4 years preceding the accident.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to a delamination of the No. 3 connecting rod bearing. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate maintenance inspection of the engine oil system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA074
- Event ID
- 20091122X82839
- Case number
- ERA10FA074
- 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: 2dbc3ab3c74211154d831c572789795b558916b68fea237c41b07ac5eb2f93d0; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:34:33.483Z.