ERA14LA202 · Oconnor Paul A ULTIMATE AERO 10-200
Oconnor Paul A ULTIMATE AERO 10-200 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Franklin County State Airport (FSO) to Franklin County State Airport (FSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA202
- 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
Oconnor Paul A ULTIMATE AERO 10-200
- Aircraft type
- Oconnor Paul ULTIMATE AERO 10-200
- 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
- N827D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Franklin County State Airport (FSO), Highgate, VTTo Franklin County State Airport (FSO), Highgate, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2010)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a local personal flight in his experimental amateur-built aerobatic airplane. The pilot reported that, about 10 minutes after takeoff and while climbing to 3,000 ft mean sea level, there was a sudden loud bang/shudder. The canopy then shattered, the engine experienced a total loss of power, and the airplane entered a spin that the pilot could not arrest. The pilot subsequently decided to egress the airplane via parachute. The airplane subsequently struck terrain and was consumed by a postimpact fire.
Examination of the propeller revealed that one of the two propeller blades had separated from the two-bladed, constant-speed propeller's hub. The propeller blade had fractured due to fatigue cracks that initiated from pitch change pin attachment holes that were drilled too deep during manufacture. Subsequent to the accident, the manufacturer recognized that the hole depth varied and instituted quality control measures. At the time of the accident, the propeller had been operated for about 260 hours.
Probable cause
The propeller blade’s failure due to fatigue cracks that initiated from pitch change pin attachment holes that had been drilled too deep during manufacture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA202
- Event ID
- 20140418X40544
- Case number
- ERA14LA202
- 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: 6e100f2e41555ca495b098b67a2804b2d38fb2e3b92243a4e777920a54bfc7e1; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:31:39.098Z.