ERA15LA077 · Thomas R Wade REVELATION
Thomas R Wade REVELATION · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Hesler Noble Field (LUL) to Hesler Noble Field (LUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA077
- 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
Thomas R Wade REVELATION
- Aircraft type
- Thomas R Wade REVELATION
- 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
- N783QJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hesler Noble Field (LUL), Laurel, MSTo Hesler Noble Field (LUL), Laurel, MS
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2013)
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while in cruise flight over a town, the engine lost total power. During the forced landing to a cemetery, the airplane's left wing struck a tree, and the airplane then veered left and impacted a tombstone and nosed over. The pilot further reported that the fuel tank was about 3/4 full when the engine lost power.
Examination of the engine revealed that the front connecting rod needle bearing had failed, which resulted in damage to the front piston and led to the loss of engine power. The engine manufacturer's instruction and maintenance manual warned that the engine was uncertified and that it was "subject to sudden failure." The manual further warned to "never use an aircraft fitted with this engine in areas, conditions and altitudes that may cause problems if forced to land as a result of sudden engine failure." The pilot should not have operated the airplane with the uncertified engine over a town that had no suitable place to land in the event of an engine failure.
Probable cause
The failure of the uncertified engine's front connecting rod needle bearing, which resulted in damage to the front piston and a subsequent loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to operate the airplane with the uncertified engine over a town that had no suitable area to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA077
- Event ID
- 20141215X73233
- Case number
- ERA15LA077
- 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: 247ae78358978677c9b9dfee473d17e2e99bc5e69a1f74242340034ddb0a205e; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:58:55.764Z.