WPR15LA137 · Piper PA 46-310P
Piper PA 46-310P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Friday Harbor Airport (KFHR) to North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA137
- 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 46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9133G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Friday Harbor Airport (KFHR), Friday Harbor, WATo North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT), North Las Vegas, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1988)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, about 30 minutes into the private, cross-country flight and while the airplane was cruising at 23,000 ft mean sea level, the engine started running roughly. The pilot noticed that the No. 5 cylinder head temperature (CHT) was lower than normal. He cycled the magnetos and noticed that the engine ran rougher than normal when the left magneto was selected. He then enriched the mixture, and the engine smoothed out. He continued to monitor the engine and adjust the mixture. About 30 minutes later, the engine lost power. The pilot diverted to a nearby airport and attempted to line up for a runway but did not have sufficient altitude. He performed a forced landing to the airport infield, which resulted in the nose landing gear collapsing and structural damage to the wing spar.
Postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. During an engine test run up to full power, the only anomaly noted was that the No. 5 CHT was 50 to 70° lower than all the other cylinders. However, the lower CHT likely would not cause a loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA137
- Event ID
- 20150330X72852
- Case number
- WPR15LA137
- 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: 0bd236e40e9a9e9950381520cf1955c58e483d780dc2bbfc3ec39f354e3180e6; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:11:38.418Z.