ERA18FA084 · Piper PA28 140
Piper PA28 140 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From 1J0 · Bonifay, FL to 1J0 · Bonifay, FL
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
- ERA18FA084
- 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
- 1 · 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 PA28 140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N3568K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1J0 · Bonifay, FLTo 1J0 · Bonifay, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner of the airplane experienced a partial loss of engine power during takeoff following a touch-and-go landing, but was able to complete a 180° turn and land safely back on the runway. During a post-landing engine run-up, the owner was unable to duplicate the problem, so he taxied to his hangar and reported the problem to his mechanic. The mechanic, a commercial pilot, subsequently boarded the airplane, performed an engine run-up, which seemed normal, and elected to fly the airplane around the airport traffic pattern. A witness, who heard and saw the airplane on final approach, stated that the engine was making "small explosions" or "backfire"-like sounds. The airplane subsequently collided with a tree before it impacted the ground and a fence short of the 4000-foot-long runway and was consumed by a postcrash fire.
Examination of the airplane revealed that the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve was stuck in the "open" position due to excessive deposits from the combustion process. It is likely that the stuck exhaust valve resulted in the partial loss of engine power. Maintenance records revealed that the engine had not been inspected in accordance with a manufacturer service bulletin regarding stuck valves. Had the service bulletin been complied with, it is possible that the accident may have been prevented. Despite the partial loss of engine power that occurred during the previous flight, the pilot flew a traffic pattern that resulted in the airplane descending into trees about 1/4 mile before the runway threshold after the airplane experienced a partial loss of engine power during the accident flight.
The pilot was diabetic, and although his blood glucose was likely not very elevated at the time he died, it was somewhat elevated on average over the preceding few weeks. Elevated blood glucose can cause blurred vision and subjective sensation of fatigue, as well as increased thirst and urination. Unless life-threatening, it does not directly impair decision-making or judgment; thus it is unlikely that the pilot's diabetes contributed to the circumstances of this accident.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to a stuck exhaust valve. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to operate an airplane with a known mechanical deficiency and his failure to fly an appropriate traffic pattern that would have allowed the airplane to reach the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18FA084
- Event ID
- 20180221X93251
- Case number
- ERA18FA084
- 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: c5939cdb9b560969693f4bf113ec0a8e2654001f2b68cdec71e18ca30498d71d; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:34:34.430Z.