ERA22LA297 · Grumman G-164A
Salem Spray Service Grumman G-164A · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Halka Nurseries Airport (9NJ6) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA297
- 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
- 0
- 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
Grumman G-164A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N8923H
- Operator
- Salem Spray Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Halka Nurseries Airport (9NJ6), Fairton, NJTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1975)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing an aerial application flight over a nursery. As he pulled up at the end of a pass, he crossed over an area of trees and heard a “loud bang.” He attempted to maneuver the airplane to land in an open field; however, the airplane “ran out of altitude and airspeed” and impacted the ground, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings.
Postaccident examination of the airplane’s vintage radial engine revealed that when rotating the propeller, the drivetrain would rotate freely, and no binding was noted. All the engine cylinders were intact. The supercharger impeller was intact, but further examination revealed that it was not rotating when the propeller was moved by hand. The rear accessory/diffuser housing was removed to expose the supercharger impeller and no damage was noted on the external impeller blades; however, the rear splined impeller shaft ball bearing spacer and supercharger impeller splines were found to have sheared, allowing the impeller to freewheel. Based on this information, it is likely that the failure of the supercharger resulted in at least a partial loss of engine power, and that the failure occurred while the pilot was performing a low altitude maneuver. The pilot was subsequently unable to recover from the resulting loss of airspeed before the airplane impacted the ground.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power while maneuvering at low altitude due to a failure of the airplane’s supercharger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA297
- Event ID
- 20220705105421
- Case number
- ERA22LA297
- 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: cd58bc5e9011204587d23aba35f90c2a9fb9b8ed62b636c730a5d6180d1acd02; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:25:12.397Z.