ERA17LA069 · Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT
Beech A36 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA069
- 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 A36 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N69286
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), NEW YORK, NYTo Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF), WESTFIELD/SPRINGFIELD, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1984)
- 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
- 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
While the private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight, the airplane's engine started running roughly when the airplane was about 5,500 ft. The pilot pushed the mixture, propeller, and throttle controls to the full forward position, but the engine continued to run roughly. The pilot then decided to return to the departure airport. During the turn back to the airport, oil covered the windscreen. The pilot declared an emergency and asked air traffic control for radar vectors to a closer airport. The pilot was having trouble controlling the airplane, so he asked for vectors to another airport. Seconds later, he saw parts, which he thought were from the propeller, separate from the airplane. The engine then lost total power, and the pilot ditched the airplane into the water below. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft was fatigue fractured at the No. 4 main bearing journal. The origin surface area of the fatigue crack was obliterated due to relative movement between the mating fracture faces; thus, the investigation could not determine the cause of the fatigue crack.
Probable cause
A fatigue crack of the crankshaft at the No. 4 main bearing journal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA069
- Event ID
- 20161216X91529
- Case number
- ERA17LA069
- 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: 3db921f06fb4ff43413f23755239d6d6c4a5c1c3a34dd33f4807030d437951c5; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:54:03.180Z.