CEN13FA352 · Aero Commander 685
Aero Commander 685 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Victoria Regional Airport (KVCT) to Victoria Regional Airport (KVCT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA352
- 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
- 0
- 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
Aero Commander 685
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 685
- 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
- N74CP
- Operator
- Daniel Nghiem
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Victoria Regional Airport (KVCT), Victoria Region, TXTo Victoria Regional Airport (KVCT), Victoria Region, TX
- 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)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two days before the accident, both engines lost power after takeoff. The pilot returned to the airport and landed the airplane uneventfully. Maintenance personnel were unable to determine the cause of the engines' power loss. Both engine wastegates were removed and bench tested, and they operated normally. Ground, high-speed taxi, and flight tests were conducted with no discrepancies noted. Earlier on the day of the accident, the airplane had been flown for an uneventful 45-minute flight. However, during takeoff for the accident flight, both engines lost power, and the pilot made a forced landing in a field. Disassembly of the left engine revealed that the idler pin was unsecured and that no nuts were present on either of the two bolt studs. The bolt studs were worn and stripped of threads near the base, consistent with being worn by the free movement of the idler pin. The engine casting where the idler pin was installed was fractured. The crankshaft, camshaft, starter drive, and starter adapter gear teeth were stripped, and metal fragments were noted in the oil screen and sump. The right engine was functionally tested and operated satisfactorily at all power settings. Based on the evidence found during the left engine examinations, it is likely that a catastrophic left engine failure occurred during the accident flight due to an unsecured idler pin.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel's failure to secure the left engine idler pin during overhaul, which resulted in a catastrophic engine failure and subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA352
- Event ID
- 20130617X33740
- Case number
- CEN13FA352
- 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: 611b09c2b60e858d31b701b1f4895059c1b7f913031d4bdbdc79f51a209ac999; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:54:29.636Z.