ERA15LA341 · Piper PA 28RT-201
Piper PA 28RT-201 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Blue Grass Airport (LEX) to Russell County Airport (K24)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA341
- 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 28RT-201
- 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
- N8162S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blue Grass Airport (LEX), Lexington, KYTo Russell County Airport (K24), Russell Springs, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Approach
- 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 handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airline transport pilot was flying a practice instrument approach in visual meteorological conditions, the airplane incurred a total loss of engine power. During the forced landing, the fuselage and wings were substantially damaged. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the brass fuel injection servo plug had backed out of the threaded plug hole on the regulator cover of the fuel injection servo and was hanging below the fuel servo by a piece of safety wire. The missing plug likely resulted in the engine running excessively lean and losing power.
In the 7 years between the manufacturer’s discovery that the fuel injection servo plug could back out of the regulator cover hole, and the accident, the manufacturer had published a safety alert, a mandatory service bulletin, and two service information letters (SILs) advising of the issue and recommending corrective actions to prevent a loss of engine power, all of which were applicable to the accident airplane. The Federal Aviation Administration had also published three airworthiness directives (ADs) mandating the specified changes developed by the manufacturer.
Review of the maintenance records for the airplane and engine revealed no entries that indicated when the fuel injection servo had been last overhauled; if any of the actions published in the safety alert, mandatory service bulletin, SILs had been accomplished; or if any maintenance had occurred that would have required removal and reinstallation of the plug.
Further review of the maintenance records also indicated that the mechanic who had been maintaining the airplane for about 10 years used a service provider to provide him with ADs; however, the AD list was not current, and none of the three ADs were included in the published AD list. Thus, the ADs had not been accomplished for the airplane.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s inadequate fuel injection servo maintenance due to an out-of-date AD list, which resulted in the fuel injection servo plug backing out of the threaded plug hole on the regulator cover of the fuel injection servo and subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA341
- Event ID
- 20150907X52038
- Case number
- ERA15LA341
- 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: bdea42c06d5c4cd2192a3c33af0b09c12df32ce16f09678e17dd2cc81751790e; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:45:15.602Z.