WPR14LA377 · Piper PA 28 150
Piper PA 28 150 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft en route
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to Darwin, CA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA377
- 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 28 150
- 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
- N5948W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo Darwin, CA (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, 2 hours into the personal cross-country flight, he observed a "flash of something" depart the front of the airplane and that the airplane instantly began violently shuddering and vibrating. The pilot immediately landed the airplane in a clearing, and he observed that almost half of one of the propeller blades was missing.
A postaccident examination of the propeller assembly revealed that the propeller blade was fractured about 24 inches from the blade butt. Examination of the fracture surface revealed characteristics of fatigue failure that originated in a stress raiser located about 1.25 inches from the leading edge on the lower blade surface. A witness mark, in the form of a distinct score line, was present, indicating that the blade experienced a strike, which created a flaw of critical size at the fatigue origin site that ultimately propagated to failure. The investigation could not determine whether an object struck the blade or the blade struck an object or when the strike occurred.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of a propeller blade due to a propeller strike by/of an unidentified object at an unknown time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA377
- Event ID
- 20140916X85937
- Case number
- WPR14LA377
- 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: be7eb3fd93183e231c4345b3c257af2da424158151bf341b8be8857a28f96c4f; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:45:48.944Z.