ERA15LA377 · Piper PA 28RT-201T
Piper PA 28RT-201T · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Foley Municipal Airport (5R4) to Owensboro Daviess County Airport (OWB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA377
- 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-201T
- 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
- N2175K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Foley Municipal Airport (5R4), Foley, ALTo Owensboro Daviess County Airport (OWB), Owensboro, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
The private pilot of the single-engine airplane was conducting an instrument flight rules flight. The pilot reported that, when the airplane was in cruise flight at 7,000 ft mean sea level, he heard two loud bangs, followed by a total loss of engine power, pieces of the engine exiting the cowling, and oil covering the windscreen. The pilot attempted to divert to another airport; however, after descending through a low cloud layer, he could not visually locate the turf runway, so he performed a forced landing to a field.
Teardown examination of the engine revealed that a rear crankshaft counterweight had separated and that the adjacent (No. 2) connecting rod had separated at the connecting rod bolts. Metallurgical examination of the counterweight revealed fatigue cracking that had originated at the counterweight aft blade surface near a bushing hole, consistent with a loose bushing moving in the hole over a prolonged period of time.
A review of maintenance records revealed that the engine had been operated for about 1,130 hours since its last overhaul, which was completed about 19 years before the accident; the engine was 7 years beyond the 12-year recommended time between overhaul (TBO). The engine manufacturer had previously issued a service bulletin, which included a warning that the improper installation of bushings during overhaul could cause engine failure. Although the failure mode evidence was consistent with a loose bushing, it was not likely due to improper installation given that the engine had operated for almost 7 years beyond its 12-year recommended TBO. If the engine had been overhauled at the recommended time, all of the bushings would have been required to be replaced with new bushings.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of a crankshaft counterweight, which resulted in a total loss of engine power during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA377
- Event ID
- 20150930X02113
- Case number
- ERA15LA377
- 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: 77d5bb0d5fb9a26f96976a6b39e3515d9052670b03d83c71ca68a68a3828e7ac; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:50:31.374Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Misspelled city name; OWB is Owensboro-Daviess County Airport, Owensboro, KY.