ERA16LA040 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Ran Air Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Lancaster Airport (LNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA040
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N334CM
- Operator
- Ran Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GATo Lancaster Airport (LNS), Lancaster, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a long personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that the airplane was in cruise flight for almost 1 hour at 11,500 ft and that everything was normal. He then noticed that the autopilot pitch was starting to increase in order to maintain altitude and that the manifold air pressure was decreasing. At this time, the rpm and oil pressure were normal. The airplane then started losing altitude, and the manifold air pressure gauge's needle was shaking. The pilot increased the throttle, but he noted no change in power or rpm. The pilot attempted to divert to the nearest airport, but on final approach, the headwind was stronger than he expected, and he knew that the airplane was not going to reach the runway because the engine had lost all power. He subsequently deployed the airplane's parachute system, and the airplane descended into a field. Examination of the wreckage revealed that adequate fuel was onboard. The engine was subsequently test run to full power with no anomalies noted.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined during a postaccident test run of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA040
- Event ID
- 20151113X51234
- Case number
- ERA16LA040
- 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: 25c82d7cbc4c673a068749cecbeae40f714d60c812e0ec7bb6e7482608bd2e9c; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:57:57.043Z.