ERA14LA369 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP) to Dickson County Municipal Airport (M02)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA369
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N9103K
- Operator
- Danny Smith
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FLTo Dickson County Municipal Airport (M02), Dickson, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had the airplane completely fueled before departing on a cross-country flight. The departure was uneventful, and the airplane was cruising about 2,500 ft above ground level and was about 2 hours into the planned 3 hour 30 minute flight when the pilot noted that the engine power did not seem correct despite all of the gauges indicating normal. He chose to divert to a nearby airport; however, the engine began to lose power at that point, and it then lost all power as the airplane was descending toward the airport. The airplane subsequently impacted trees about 1 mile south of the airport, and a postcrash fire consumed the wreckage. A witness near the accident site reported observing the engine sputtering and black smoke emanating from the right side of the airplane as it flew overhead.
Examination of the engine revealed that one propeller blade was bent aft and exhibited chordwise scratches. The other blade exhibited an outward bend at the tip. The top spark plugs were removed; all of their electrodes were intact and gray or oil-soaked in color, except for the No. 6 spark plug, which exhibited dark soot. Further examination of the No. 6 cylinder did not reveal any other anomalies. The valve covers were removed, and oil was noted throughout the engine. When the propeller was rotated by hand, camshaft, crankshaft, and valve train continuity were confirmed to the rear accessory section, and thumb compression was attained on all cylinders. The magnetos, engine-driven fuel pump, vacuum pump, and fuel injector exhibited thermal damage from the postcrash fire and could not be tested. The postcrash fire damage precluded a determination of the cause of the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined due to postcrash fire damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA369
- Event ID
- 20140731X71003
- Case number
- ERA14LA369
- 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: 114d27da6ff336b8d92308fdc2ae55dc4a250f7d66f5fb61222e5b8fd46e11d0; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:35:26.697Z.