ERA15LA217 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) to Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA217
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N597JG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TNTo Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a training flight, the student and flight instructor heard a "loud bang" from the engine area, accompanied by engine roughness and reduced power. The flight instructor performed a forced landing to a field, resulting in substantial damage to the engine firewall. An examination of the engine revealed the No. 4 cylinder head was fractured outboard of the barrel thread. Further examination revealed that the cylinder fractured due to fatigue that initiated at the interior of the head near the intake valve. The serial number for the cylinder was outside the range of those affected by an airworthiness directive requiring inspection and/or replacement of certain cylinders.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 4 engine cylinder due to fatigue, resulting in a catastrophic failure of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA217
- Event ID
- 20150520X41333
- Case number
- ERA15LA217
- 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: 8e2050d4b556b406d727ccfc86bba40df6cb8316e42cd6dcb99bc90957ed5dff; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:20:08.791Z.