CEN22LA247 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident en route
From Union Parish Airport (F87) to Houma Terrebonne Airport (HUM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA247
- 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
Piper PA-32R-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N416TS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Union Parish Airport (F87), Farmerville, LATo Houma Terrebonne Airport (HUM), Houma, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1998)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
While enroute on a cross-country flight, an aural alarm sounded that indicated the oil pressure was low. The pilot turned to the nearest airport for a precautionary landing and attempted to troubleshoot the issue, but the engine remained very “sluggish.” While maneuvering toward the airport the pilot could not maintain altitude and made an off-field landing into a field about 7.5 miles from the airport. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and forward section of the fuselage during the forced landing.
No preimpact anomalies were found with the airframe, fuel-injected engine, or engine oil system that would have precluded normal operations. The engine had continuity throughout its drive system. The engine controls were connected and secured from the cockpit to the engine and the oil and fuel lines were connected and secured. The engine oil cooler and associated oil lines did not show any evidence of oil leakage. Oil was present in the oil lines, engine oil sump, and oil pump. The oil pump turned freely with no binding. The reason for the low oil pressure warning and the subsequent partial loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA247
- Event ID
- 20220614105260
- Case number
- CEN22LA247
- 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: d46c0952ccdf703504534f31223acd815112440f176c6a804b25dbfb42ee7b0b; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:19:56.392Z.