WPR15LA217 · Piper PA 28-181
Piper PA 28-181 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From KHEN · Las Vegas, NV to Brown Field Municipal Airport (KSDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA217
- 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
- N8740E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KHEN · Las Vegas, NVTo Brown Field Municipal Airport (KSDM), San Diego, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that the takeoff seemed normal, but once airborne, the airplane's climb was "sluggish," and the engine rpm was between 200 and 300 rpm lower than normal. He was able to maintain straight and level flight at 300 ft above ground level. When the pilot made a left turn in an attempt to return to the airport, the airplane immediately began to lose altitude. The pilot subsequently landed in an open construction site. During the landing sequence onto uneven terrain, the landing gear was torn off, and the airplane caught fire, which subsequently consumed the airplane.
During postaccident examination of the engine, as the crankshaft was rotated by hand, the travel of the intake valve rockers was about 50% less than normal. Disassembly of the engine revealed wear on the intake lobes of the camshaft and spalling damage on the faces of the tappets. The decreased travel of the intake valves would have reduced the amount of fuel/air mixture allowed into each cylinder, which reduced the overall power the engine could produce.
A review of maintenance records revealed that the engine was last overhauled 28 years before the accident and had accumulated 1,461 hours since overhaul. The engine manufacturer recommended that the engine be overhauled after 2,000 hours of operation or after 12 years, whichever occurred first.
Probable cause
The engine's inability to produce full-rated power due to wear on internal engine components, which resulted in a loss of altitude and subsequent landing on uneven terrain. Contributing to the accident was the airplane owner's failure to maintain the engine in accordance with the manufacturer's recommended guidance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA217
- Event ID
- 20150719X02305
- Case number
- WPR15LA217
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: c2a4a6e424e1b876e638c132332f7a280e525d84079903611959d46f7c1d4a3f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:32:51.042Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Misspelled city name; KSDM is Brown Field Municipal, San Diego, CA.