ERA10LA316 · McCulloch Jerry RV-4
McCulloch Jerry RV-4 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Fuquay Airport / Angier Field (78NC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA316
- 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
McCulloch Jerry RV-4
- Aircraft type
- Mcculloch Jerry RV-4
- 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
- N418GM
- Operator
- Paul D Franzon · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GATo Fuquay Airport / Angier Field (78NC), Fuquay Angier, NC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during cruise flight the engine made a popping sound and subsequently experienced a loss of power. He performed an emergency landing on a road and during the landing roll the airplane struck a ditch. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft idler gear was missing a lock plate, which likely resulted in the idler gear vibrating loose from the engine case, leading to the loss of engine power. The lock plate was not found and no other anomalies were noted during the examination. An annual conditional inspection on the engine was conducted 10 days prior to the accident; the engine was overhauled about 320 flight hours prior to the accident. Based on the evidence and records, it is likely that the lock plate was not installed during the last overhaul.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper installation and inspection of the crankshaft idler gear, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA316
- Event ID
- 20100618X44333
- Case number
- ERA10LA316
- 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: 0e3f6a80c6e343d8ee61c92bdba010ef2a32478840efab3e34b0de27ceade0b1; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:27:53.155Z.