ERA16LA295 · Piper PA34 200
American Flight Training Piper PA34 200 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft while maneuvering
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to North Perry Airport (HWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA295
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA34 200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA34
- 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
- N16499
- Operator
- American Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instructional flight in a multiengine airplane, the pilot receiving instruction had just completed a right turn at an altitude of 3,300 ft mean sea level when the flight instructor heard a loud noise and saw something separate from the right engine. The flight instructor took the controls but was unable to maintain altitude with one engine operating and performed a forced landing into a swamp. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the right engine had separated from its mounts, one propeller blade was missing, and the right propeller hub was fractured. Metallurgical examination of the propeller hub revealed a fatigue fracture along a grease-fitting hole. An airworthiness directive had been issued about 8 years before the accident that required initial (within 50 flight hours) and repetitive (every 100 flight hours) eddy current inspection of the area around the lubrication holes of the propeller hub blade sockets. The right propeller had been overhauled about 14 months before the accident and had accrued about 440 hours at the time of the accident. The airplane's most recent 100-hour inspection (which included inspection of both propellers) occurred about 3 months before the accident. Review of maintenance records did not reveal any documentation that the airworthiness directive was complied with on the overhauled right propeller hub.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to comply with an airworthiness directive for the propeller, which resulted in a propeller hub failure due to fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA295
- Event ID
- 20160819X95608
- Case number
- ERA16LA295
- 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: 49186c2bd41579c5392ecda04db9940101384fa84a5d7f63d53af71a721f3da8; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:10:33.248Z.