ERA20LA287 · Piper PA34 200
Upgrade Piper PA34 200 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Bangor International Airport (BGR) to Groton New London Airport (GON)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA287
- 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 PA34 200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA34
- 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
- N41382
- Operator
- Upgrade
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bangor International Airport (BGR), Bangor, METo Groton New London Airport (GON), Groton, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1974)
- 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 base
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instructional flight, the pilot receiving instruction performed several landings at several airports before proceeding to the home base airport where he executed two touch-and go landings and remained in the airport traffic pattern. When abeam the approach end of the landing runway while on the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern with the landing gear extended and 10° of flaps extended, the receiving instruction began to descend while turning onto the base leg of the airport traffic pattern. The flight instructor stated that at time he heard an engine sputter and verified the engine controls were in the proper position. He heard the engine sputter again and "felt the [airplane] jerk" and stated, "my controls." He maintained airspeed and verified the engine controls were full forward, retracted the flaps but decided to leave the landing gear extended due to the altitude and proximity to the airport. He verified the malfunction to be the right engine and felt it was developing some power, but with less output than the left. He briefly pitched nose down, then nose up, and when he noticed a high descent rate, he feathered the right propeller and placed the right mixture control to idle cutoff. He maneuvered for a forced landing on a street but collided with and remained suspended in the roof of a house.
Postaccident examination of both engines, their systems, left propeller, and left propeller governor revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. There was no evidence or preimpact failure or malfunction of either fuel supply system. While the flight instructor reported he moved the right propeller control to the feather position near the end of the flight, the right propeller blades were on the start locks and not feathered. Functional testing of the right propeller and operational testing of the right propeller governor revealed no preimpact failure or malfunction. Therefore, there was no mechanical reason why the right propeller blades would not feather if commanded before the engine rpm became too low and engaged the propeller start locks.
Probable cause
The reported partial loss of right engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA287
- Event ID
- 20200818X95925
- Case number
- ERA20LA287
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-08-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e01d46aa5b102cc222ca099eab87122804f739e492005875b22a805c3b422663; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:49:37.080Z.