ERA16LA319 · Grumman G164 A
Grumman G164 A · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Chestertown, MD to Chestertown, MD
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA319
- 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
Grumman G164 A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G164
- 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
- N75EP
- Operator
- Paniere Eric W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chestertown, MDTo Chestertown, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1974)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The day before the accident, the pilot was performing aerial application work when he noticed a significant loss of engine power and made an emergency landing in a corn field. Maintenance personnel inspected the engine and replaced the No. 2 cylinder, test ran the engine, and returned the airplane to service. The following day, the pilot ran the engine for several minutes before flight to ensure that it was operating normally. Experiencing no anomalous behavior, the pilot conducted a short-field takeoff, but immediately after rotation and during initial climb, the engine lost partial power. The pilot was unable to climb or maintain altitude and the airplane settled back onto the ground before colliding with farm equipment. Postaccident examination revealed that the No. 3 cylinder failed catastrophically. The failed accident cylinder was not examined in detail, and the manner in which the failure occurred was not determined.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to a failure of the No. 3 cylinder head, which resulted in a forced landing and collision with ground equipment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA319
- Event ID
- 20160921X75343
- Case number
- ERA16LA319
- 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: 1e2d7ce9c2389127b413e9d9a7b6797760c1efe8aef8f839c3446c46b9de1d49; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:17:37.709Z.