ERA16LA272 · Harrity William V GLASAIR (SH2F) FT
Mainpro Harrity William V GLASAIR (SH2F) FT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) to Clermont County Airport (I69)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA272
- 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
Harrity William V GLASAIR (SH2F) FT
- Aircraft type
- Harrity William GLASAIR
- 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
- N67WH
- Operator
- Mainpro
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TNTo Clermont County Airport (I69), Batavia, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1991)
- 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 · climb to 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airplane was climbing to 7,500 ft mean sea level, the private pilot noted that the engine oil temperature was getting high, so he leveled off for a few minutes to cool down the engine before resuming the climb. When the airplane was passing through 6,000 ft, the engine shuddered and lost all power; smoke started filling the cockpit. The pilot declared an emergency, shut down the engine, and selected an uncongested two-lane highway for landing. During his final approach, after maneuvering to avoid power lines, he pulled back to flare the airplane, but the airplane "pancaked" onto the road, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 3 cylinder connecting rod had separated from the piston near the wrist pin. The investigation could not determine the reason for the separation.
Probable cause
The in-flight failure of the No. 3 cylinder connecting rod for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA272
- Event ID
- 20160726X52234
- Case number
- ERA16LA272
- 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: d294289fbcd0972e883ef15bb308ea84b49b7f13307d240592dee88165affa90; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:42:08.089Z.