WPR14LA031 · Piper PA 28-180
Piper PA 28-180 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH) to Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA031
- 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
- N30865
- Operator
- Peterson Arnie D
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (BIH), Bishop, CATo Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH), Fresno, CA
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was a co-owner of the airplane, reported to an air traffic controller about 1 hour into a cross-country flight over mountainous terrain that the engine had lost oil pressure and then power. The pilot performed a forced landing into trees. Postaccident examination revealed that the loss of engine power resulted from oil starvation due to oil leaking from a fractured fitting at the oil pressure gauge/sending unit port on the engine's rear accessory case. An oil pressure sending unit, which the pilot, who was not a certificated mechanic, had installed at this location just before the accident flight, was found dangling by its electrical wiring harness and not supported. The sending unit was not approved for installation on this airplane. It is likely that the fitting fractured because of vibration due to the sending unit's lack of support. The engine operating time between the installation of the sending unit and the fitting fracture was about 1 hour.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the improper installation of an oil pressure sending unit by the pilot, who was not a certificated mechanic, which resulted in a forced landing in mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA031
- Event ID
- 20131024X65216
- Case number
- WPR14LA031
- 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: a944ee57df983745ab954c500d6238a9cc299c4b9e9c65c9fa31ddd16ce7133a; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:01:34.546Z.