CEN10LA531 · Piper PA-28-161
Donnair Aviation Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Dowagiac Municipal Airport (C91) to Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA531
- 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
Piper PA-28-161
- 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
- N3560B
- Operator
- Donnair Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Dowagiac Municipal Airport (C91), Dowagiac, MITo Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ), Valparasio, 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 · 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 3,000 feet above mean sea level (msl) the engine lost all power. The pilot executed a forced landing in a corn field. A postaccident inspection of the engine revealed the heads on the No. 3 cylinder intake valve lifter and the No. 4 cylinder intake valve lifter were fractured with a portion of the head separated. The entire head of the No.4 cylinder exhaust valve lifter was separated from the lifter body and the fractured surface on the body was completely smeared from impact damage. The extensive damage to the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve likely indicated it was the first failure in the sequence; however, the damage precluded a determination of the failure mode. Six pieces of the separated sections from the remaining valve lifter heads were found inside the crankcase. Their fractured surfaces did not show any indications of fatigue. The engine had accumulated 1,637 hours since the overhaul. Reconditioned lifters were installed on the engine during the overhaul.
Probable cause
A failure of the engine's No. 3 and No. 4 cylinder valve lifters for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA531
- Event ID
- 20100909X65425
- Case number
- CEN10LA531
- 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: 74492825064711f72207d763af6527e98394bf550d1d307eba83c67cdb29157e; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:08:58.432Z.