WPR18LA033 · Piper PA 28R-201T
Piper PA 28R-201T · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to Brackett Field (POC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA033
- 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 PA 28R-201T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5966V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NVTo Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1977)
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 40 minutes after takeoff and while the airplane was at a cruise altitude of 10,000 ft mean sea level, the pilot began leaning the engine mixture. After about 5 minutes, the pilot observed that the engine was running roughly, the No. 5 cylinder head temperature had spiked, and the airplane was unable to maintain altitude. The pilot could not restore engine power and subsequently made a forced landing on a highway. The airplane touched down hard, which resulted in substantial damage to both wings.
A postaccident engine examination confirmed continuity to the accessory section. Spark was produced on all six top spark plug leads, and thumb compression was obtained on all cylinders except the No. 5 cylinder. The top spark plugs were removed, and all except the No. 5 spark plug exhibited dark-colored combustion deposits; the No. 5 spark plug exhibited a molten, metal-like substance around the electrode. Cylinder Nos. 1 and 3 exhibited minor signs of detonation. The No. 5 cylinder exhibited signs of detonation/preignition with material missing from around the circumference of the piston face, and the No. 5 cylinder exhaust and intake valves showed signs of mechanical damage. The detonation was consistent with excessive leaning at high power settings.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the detonation of the No. 5 cylinder due to excessive leaning at high power settings, which resulted in a forced landing and the subsequent hard touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA033
- Event ID
- 20171116X35540
- Case number
- WPR18LA033
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-11-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4e95991c406d306184ec47b5ea08679ae6dbf761ac657f7fee7fcfb3e410bd37; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:00:22.141Z.