ERA16LA217 · Beech P35
Beech P35 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Francis S Gabreski Airport (FOK) to Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA217
- 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
Beech P35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N112MB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Francis S Gabreski Airport (FOK), Westhampton Beach, NYTo Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN), Taunton, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1962)
- 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
During cruise flight over open water, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power, and the private pilot ditched the airplane. Subsequent examination of the engine revealed that the oil filter adapter was loose and the fiber gasket was torn and partially extruded. Because of these conditions, oil leaked from the engine, which led to the failure of the Nos. 2 and 4 connecting rods due to a lack of oil lubrication. The oil filter adapter was not original equipment on the engine; it was installed under a supplemental type certificate which required that the oil filter adapter fiber gasket be replaced anytime the oil filter adapter was removed from the engine and reinstalled and every 300 hours or 3 years, whichever occurred first. Maintenance records indicated that the oil filter adapter was installed about 4 1/2 years before the accident. No other maintenance entries or records pertaining to the inspection of the fiber gasket was noted during the 4 years before the accident, and no record concerning the installation of a new oil filter adapter fiber gasket was located.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to inadequate maintenance of the oil filter adapter, which resulted in an oil leak and subsequent oil starvation to the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA217
- Event ID
- 20160620X73114
- Case number
- ERA16LA217
- 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: f3c73e4438bc64795cc3988deacead485b9575b456a6ea1e32c56c44a60fc92d; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:31:42.748Z.