CEN19TA293 · Piper J3C
Piper J3C · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Frankfort Clinton County Regional Airport (KFKR) to Huntington Municipal Airport (KHHG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19TA293
- 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 J3C
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N49614
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frankfort Clinton County Regional Airport (KFKR), Frankfort, INTo Huntington Municipal Airport (KHHG), Huntington, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 74 years (built 1945)
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger were en route on a multi-leg cross-country flight when the pilot noticed oil on the side window and the oil pressure gauge indicated a loss of oil pressure. The pilot was not sure that the engine would continue to run if he diverted to the nearest grass strip, so he executed a precautionary landing to a field, which substantially damaged right wing ribs and spar. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the oil cap was missing; it was later located at the last departure airport. The pilot stated that he was in a hurry to depart and did not properly reinstall or secure the oil cap. The did not reveal other mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to reinstall the oil cap after adding oil, which resulted to oil starvation and a precaautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19TA293
- Event ID
- 20190826X40754
- Case number
- CEN19TA293
- 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, 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: cdd85b8113201b4ee78ab4ae9486556191479a82ff6849114a6b6cb2a2317d65; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:52:55.166Z.