WPR18LA101 · Piper PA28R 200
Piper PA28R 200 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to Paso Robles Municipal Airport (PRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA101
- 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 PA28R 200
- 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
- N33807
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo Paso Robles Municipal Airport (PRB), Paso Robles, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1969)
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and private pilot receiving instruction completed a touch-and-go landing in night visual meteorological conditions. During the initial climb, they heard a "loud tick" noise, then the low vacuum annunciator light illuminated. About 350 to 400 ft above ground level, the engine lost all power, and the propeller came to a complete stop. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and performed a forced landing to a nearby field, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and aft fuselage. Examination revealed that the oil filler cap was not secured, and that the engine contained about 1 quart of oil. In addition, oil was splattered on the inside of the engine compartment. It is likely that the pilots failed to secure the oil filler cap during the preflight inspection, which resulted in the loss of engine oil inflight, eventual oil starvation, and the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilots' inadequate preflight inspection, which failed to ensure that the oil filler cap was secured and resulted in oil starvation and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA101
- Event ID
- 20180307X11433
- Case number
- WPR18LA101
- 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 2018-03-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6d2fb72f7d178ae191dd74c92fabafba551957a01fc599cd4810f13bae1d9c36; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:35:24.635Z.