CEN15LA421 · Lerch RV6A
Lerch RV6A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Sandusky City Airport (Y83) to Ray Community Airport (57D)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA421
- 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
Lerch RV6A
- Aircraft type
- Lerch RV6
- 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
- N215DG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sandusky City Airport (Y83), Sandusky, MITo Ray Community Airport (57D), Ray, MI
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while in cruise flight, he smelled an odor and subsequently confirmed that the engine had lost oil pressure. The pilot believed that the airplane would not be able to reach an airport, so he decided to shut down the engine and make a precautionary landing to a nearby dirt road. Shortly before touchdown, the pilot saw obstacles near the road, so he banked the airplane left toward an open field to avoid them. The airplane landed hard in the field and subsequently nosed over.
A postaccident examination revealed that the lower fuselage and the sides of the fuselage were covered in engine oil. Further examination established that the oil filter had disengaged from the adapter assembly and was the source of the loss of engine oil during the accident flight. The oil filter adapter assembly had been modified for a spin-on oil filter; however, the modification had not been completed in accordance with the installation instructions, and, as such, an incorrect oil filter had been used. It is likely that the incorrect modification of the oil filter adapter assembly resulted in a lack of proper thread engagement with the adapter heli-coil, the subsequent separation of the oil filter, and the corresponding loss of engine oil during the accident flight. A review of the engine maintenance logbook established that the incorrect oil filter adapter assembly modification and the corresponding incorrect oil filter had likely been used since the last engine overhaul, which was completed 18 years before the accident. The engine had accumulated 627 hours since the last overhaul.
Probable cause
The in-flight loss of engine oil after the oil filter separated from the engine adapter assembly because of an incorrect modification of the oil filter adapter assembly, which resulted in a precautionary landing in a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA421
- Event ID
- 20150924X81420
- Case number
- CEN15LA421
- 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: 9c4d36d59062108f6eb4051bb3ebc0ecc91a92ce60cfe24f2ad9a17af11a98ee; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:49:06.302Z.