ERA19LA063 · Lancair LC41 550FG
Lancair LC41 550FG · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Wings Field (LOM) to Greater Binghamton/Edwin A Link field (BGM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA063
- 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
Lancair LC41 550FG
- Aircraft type
- Lancair LC41
- 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
- N618G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wings Field (LOM), Philadelphia, PATo Greater Binghamton/Edwin A Link field (BGM), Binghamton, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2004)
- 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 (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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, about 20 minutes after departure, the airplane began to shudder. He adjusted the engine power, but the airplane continued to shake before the engine lost total power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a road, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage.
Visual examination revealed multiple holes in the top of the engine crankcase. Disassembly of the engine revealed that the Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5 connecting rods were fractured and separated from the connecting rod journals. The connecting rods, connecting rod bearings, and the crankshaft’s connecting rod journals displayed thermal discoloration consistent with oil starvation. Examination of the engine components and engine-related systems revealed no evidence of a pre-impact oil leak; however, the left turbocharger was missing its turbine wheel, and the shaft was fractured outboard of the turbine piston ring. A test run of an exemplar engine without the left turbine wheel revealed significant oil loss during operation.
The left turbocharger was overhauled 158 flight hours before the accident, and its wheel assemblies were reused rather than replaced, as specified by the manufacturer. It is likely the separation of the left turbine wheel resulted in oil escaping the engine, which resulted in oil starvation and catastrophic engine failure.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power and catastrophic engine failure due to the failure of the left turbocharger, which resulted in oil loss and oil starvation. Contributing to the accident was the failure of maintenance personnel to overhaul the turbocharger in accordance with manufacturer guidance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA063
- Event ID
- 20181212X01623
- Case number
- ERA19LA063
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: 2fcf56401e4d9cb422e290762bf3e77ffb5c79ccfd72ba1810af0008882e5083; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:29:13.521Z.