ERA20LA195 · Piper PA24 250
Piper PA24 250 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Lake Country Regional Airport (W63) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA195
- 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 PA24 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N5948P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Country Regional Airport (W63), Clarksville, VATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1959)
- 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 · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
During a personal flight the private pilot proceeded to the destination airport and entered the airport traffic pattern for a planned full-stop landing. While on a close-in downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern the engine experienced a sudden and total loss of engine power. The pilot turned toward the approach end of the runway and attempted to restore engine power but was unsuccessful. The airplane impacted an obstruction light and touched down in tall grass on airport property before coming to rest upright. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed the crankshaft gear attachment bolt was loose, the lockplate was fractured, and the alignment dowel was sheared. The intact portion of the fractured lockplate was similar to an un-bent exemplar lockplate; therefore, it is likely the mechanic who overhauled the engine about 253 hours and 8 years earlier did not bend the lockplate against the flat of the crankshaft gear attachment bolt head. The crankshaft gear drives two idler gears in the accessory gearbox, which drive the camshaft, engine driven fuel pump, vacuum pump and the magneto drive couplings. The failure of the crankshaft gear to rotate would result in a loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The powerplant mechanic’s failure to properly affix the engine crankshaft gear lockplate during overhaul, resulting in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA195
- Event ID
- 20200526X62535
- Case number
- ERA20LA195
- 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: 16515e0911cc6a5261458d8784b42581b11eccde720cb3d9cd895c0e196bf967; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:41:28.885Z.