CEN15LA360 · North American T 28A
North American T 28A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Las Cruces International Airport (LRU) to El Paso International Airport (KELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA360
- 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
- 1 · 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
North American T 28A
- Aircraft type
- North American T-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
- N14124
- Operator
- Tokoph David Dba
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Las Cruces International Airport (LRU), Las Cruces, NMTo El Paso International Airport (KELP), El Paso, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1951)
- 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 (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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 5 minutes after takeoff, the engine lost power and the pilot turned back toward the departure airport to make a forced landing. The airplane touched down about ½ mile short of the runway on uneven terrain, seriously injuring the pilot. The pilot was transported to a hospital via helicopter, but died four days later.
Examination of the engine revealed failure of the No. 6 cylinder connecting rod. The connecting rod was most likely initially damaged during ground operations when the propeller was improperly rotated when a cylinder was hydraulically locked. The investigation was not able to determine when the initial damage occurred.
Probable cause
Failure of the No. 6 cylinder connecting rod, due to improper rotation of the propeller during a previous hydraulic lock.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA360
- Event ID
- 20150817X61459
- Case number
- CEN15LA360
- 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: 7bdcb1a3a1977a09f6205014af55effbb1570b2ef88cd2676b9371bdc6667bdb; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:28:51.466Z.