ERA12LA469 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR) to Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA469
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N3692R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR), Statesboro, GATo Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR), Statesboro, GA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 5 minutes after takeoff, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power and impacted a row of trees during the resultant forced landing. The accident flight was the first following a 100-hour maintenance inspection. The pilot/mechanic reported that he had changed the engine oil and oil filter as part of that inspection; however, he did not utilize a torque wrench to tighten the filter as required. Oil was noted on the ground, beginning in the area outside of the hangar doors where the maintenance was performed to the departure runway. Postaccident examination revealed that the filter was secured in place with a safety wire; however, it was able to be freely rotated by hand to the extent of that wire. It is likely that during the operation of the engine on the accident flight, oil escaped around the oil filter, which resulted in oil exhaustion and subsequent seizure of the engine.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power as a result of oil exhaustion due to the mechanic's failure to apply appropriate torque to the oil filter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA469
- Event ID
- 20120721X40501
- Case number
- ERA12LA469
- 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: 8bdeaf18e7fe572619eed4f5e357ea39df00bad5f6244cf1b6baf51d5d300b5a; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:01:24.380Z.