WPR16LA060 · Piper PA46 310P
Piper PA46 310P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI) to Scottsdale Airport (SDL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA060
- 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 PA46 310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N777PG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WATo Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1987)
- 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 reported that, about 90 minutes after takeoff and about 19,000 ft, the engine of the high-performance pressurized airplane lost total power. Although the loss of power happened at high altitude, for the next 11 minutes, the pilot did not perform any troubleshooting steps, which were limited in scope and would not have taken long to complete, and instead diverted directly to an airport.
After arriving at the diversion airport with altitude remaining, the pilot performed a circling descent maneuver over the runway. During the landing approach, he moved the landing gear selection lever to the "down" position, but the gear did not extend, so the pilot chose to land the airplane on snow adjacent to the runway. Just before touchdown, the main landing gear extended, but the nose landing gear remained retracted. Upon touchdown, the airplane's nose dug into the snow. The airplane then abruptly stopped, sustaining substantial damage to the forward fuselage and both wings.
Examination of the engine and landing gear did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the engine performed normally during a subsequent test run. Given the engine ran normally during the test run, it is possible that, if the pilot had attempted to troubleshoot the problem, engine power could have been restored. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined. According to the owner, there was a previously undiagnosed landing gear problem that, on two previous occasions, had resulted in the delayed deployment of the landing gear after flying at high altitudes in cold weather. Given the airplane was flying at high altitude in cold weather when the event occurred, a reoccurrence of the landing gear anomaly could not be ruled out.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination revealed no evidence of an anomaly that would have precluded normal operation. Contributing to the accident was a preexisting landing gear anomaly that prevented the landing gear from completely extending after flight at high altitude in cold weather during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA060
- Event ID
- 20160201X35918
- Case number
- WPR16LA060
- 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: 14cdc69502c49a54bc714fc5b2b4b2c723afe550745f5e109368e1ce2e2e5c7b; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:07:39.119Z.