ERA16LA016 · Titan TORNADO
Titan TORNADO · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Warrenton Fauquier Airport (HWY) to Warrenton Fauquier Airport (HWY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA016
- 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
Titan TORNADO
- Aircraft type
- Titan TORNADO
- 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
- N4070F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warrenton Fauquier Airport (HWY), Warrenton, VATo Warrenton Fauquier Airport (HWY), Warrenton, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2007)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after flying the airplane for about 40 minutes on a personal flight, the engine suddenly lost power and ran rough. The pilot could not maintain level flight and performed a forced landing to a road. After touchdown on a roadway, it turned to the left, and the airplane departed the pavement, struck a drainage ditch, and then struck a fence. The airplane’s wingtips, landing gear, and stabilator were substantially damaged. Examination of the engine revealed the No. 3 cylinder had incurred significant internal damage. Numerous metal fragments were present, the piston had broken up, and the exhaust valve head had separated from the stem. Further examination revealed multiple initiation fatigue cracking of the exhaust valve stem, which progressed until failure. Research indicated that fatigue cracking of exhaust valves in similar engines had occurred in the past. Investigations by multiple countries revealed that valve stem separation due to fatigue, in addition to stem cracking of other valves in engines that did ultimately separate, had occurred. This evidence also indicated that overheating of the valves was at least a factor in those engine failures.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fatigue cracking and separation of the No. 3 cylinder exhaust valve stem.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA016
- Event ID
- 20151016X84916
- Case number
- ERA16LA016
- 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: 10891b404f143e7394b7115229a19a0f768173a0f7f1ec24f87a078142ce4a9b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:53:37.533Z.