ERA16LA331 · Piper PA32RT 300T
Piper PA32RT 300T · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Florence Regional Airport (FLO) to Asheville Regional Airport (AVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA331
- 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 PA32RT 300T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N39686
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florence Regional Airport (FLO), Florence, SCTo Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Asheville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot and passenger were breaking in the newly overhauled engine on a cross-country flight in accordance with the engine manufacturer's break-in procedures. About 20 minutes after departure, during cruise flight at 75% power, the engine began running "mildly rough" and then began "cutting in and out." The pilot chose to divert to another airport, and about 5 miles from that airport, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot subsequently performed a forced landing to a field, during which the wings and fuselage sustained substantial damage.
When the single-drive dual magneto was placed on a test stand, the left side of the magneto did not produce spark. Internal examination of the magneto revealed that the left and right capacitor fastenings were not properly torqued, which resulted in intermittent arcing and melting of the cam follower and the subsequent loss of power. It could not be determined when the magneto's capacitor fasteners had last been torqued.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the improper torqueing of the magneto, which led it to its malfunctioning in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA331
- Event ID
- 20161003X11501
- Case number
- ERA16LA331
- 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: 50d29ab392c405f44e64d9261c665acb61cfdffc755539debc682c1777105b0c; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:20:30.625Z.