WPR13LA043 · Cirrus SR22
Cirrus SR22 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Animas Air Park (00C) to OSL · Nogales, AZ
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
- WPR13LA043
- 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
Cirrus SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N800RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Animas Air Park (00C), Durango, COTo OSL · Nogales, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2005)
- 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 · change of cruise level
- 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 handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airplane was in a cruise climb from 12,000 to 14,000 ft mean sea level, the pilot/owner of the airplane heard a loud "pop," and, about 4 minutes later, he observed an oil pressure annunciation on the primary flight display. Within 1 minute, the pilot saw that the engine had completely lost oil pressure, so he shut down the engine and advised an air traffic controller of the situation. He then asked for and received vectors to the nearest airport, but, during the descent, he recognized that the airplane would be unable to reach the airport. Shortly thereafter, he advised the controller that he would deploy the airplane's ballistic parachute when the airplane was over suitable terrain. After the pilot deployed the parachute, the airplane impacted a field and came to rest upright.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that a nipple in the flexible oil line used to provide engine oil to an aftermarket engine supercharger had failed due to fatigue, which resulted in a complete loss of engine oil. The fatigue crack had multiple initiation sites that were not the result of any manufacturing or material defects. Evidence indicates that a washer was present on the nipple threads between the nipple and the oil nozzle at one time. The washer initially prevented proper thread engagement and sealing of the joint between the nipple and the nozzle. To seal the joint, the nipple was then overtorqued, which resulted in the fatigue crack initiation. Engine vibration caused the flexible oil line to impose cyclic loads on the nipple, which, over time, failed due to fatigue.
Although the supercharger installation was approved under a Federal Aviation Administration supplemental type certificate (STC), the installation was not in accordance with the STC installation and maintenance instructions or standard maintenance practices. Although review of the supercharger STC installation and maintenance instructions revealed that they did not contain detailed information for installing the oil nozzle or nipple, the lack of this information did not appear to directly contribute to the improper installation of the supercharger on the accident airplane. It could not be determined when or by whom the improper installation was accomplished.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of an improperly installed nipple in the oil system of a supplemental type certificate-installed supercharger, which resulted in a complete loss of engine oil during cruise climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA043
- Event ID
- 20121116X62231
- Case number
- WPR13LA043
- 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: cb986f68ba4a851633ad6b9821a192d10d6df1ba6e4a983bdbe4ef0228543d3b; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:26:27.300Z.