CEN21LA402 · Murphy Renegade II
Murphy Renegade II · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Cushing Field Ltd Airport (0C8) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA402
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Murphy Renegade II
- Aircraft type
- Murphy RENEGADE
- 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
- N490DJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cushing Field Ltd Airport (0C8), Newark, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2013)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
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 and passenger were conducting “fast taxi” operations and did not intend to fly the airplane, but, after the airplane’s tail became airborne, the pilot decided to continue the takeoff. When the airplane was about 500 ft above ground level, he heard a “click” before the engine lost total power. The pilot made a forced landing in a soybean field, during which the airplane nosed over shortly after touchdown. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the upper right wing and an engine mount tube.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that one of the two pistons, the magneto-side piston, had seized in the cylinder. The piston and cylinder bore exhibited scrape marks consistent with a piston seizure, and piston and ring material was missing with associated batter to the cylinder head, piston dome, and spark plug. The other, power-takeoff piston and cylinder exhibited no evidence of a piston seizure.
Other than the magneto-side piston seizure and associated secondary damage, the engine exhibited no evidence of a mechanical malfunction that would have prevented normal operation. Thus, the total loss of engine power during initial climb was likely due to the piston seizure.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during initial climb due to a piston seizure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA402
- Event ID
- 20210907103805
- Case number
- CEN21LA402
- 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: b5dae26ccf511c8766a42f0e6396ff7fb704025804648e8d249e3816da1c8439; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:29:31.551Z.