CEN23LA261 · Quad City CHALLENGER II
Quad City CHALLENGER II · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA261
- 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
Quad City CHALLENGER II
- Aircraft type
- Quad City CHALLENGER
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 28 years (built 1995)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the day before the accident, the pilot reported that he drained the fuel and replaced it with new fuel, replaced the fuel filter, and checked all fluid levels and lines; the airplane had not flown since October 2021. The pilot reported that on the day of the accident, he flew the airplane for about 20 minutes and then returned to pick up a passenger. On the second flight, the airplane’s engine lost power after flying about 10 minutes. During the forced landing, the airplane impacted trees and terrain which resulted in substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine were performed at the pilot’s residence. The examination of the engine revealed oil around the power take-off (PTO) piston and cylinder head. The PTO piston displayed signatures consistent with seizure. A piece of old, brittle oil injection line was discovered near the oil injection pump and the fuel, primer, and vent lines were also found in an aged and hardened state. Given the evidence, the PTO piston likely failed due to a lack of oil as a result of the poorly maintained lubrication system, which resulted in a loss of engine power. There were no maintenance records for the airplane and according to the pilot, the hoses had not been replaced since 2009. The engine manufacturer’s maintenance manual states that all lubrication system hoses must be replaced every 5 years.
Probable cause
A seizure of the power takeoff piston due to inadequate maintenance to the lubrication system, which resulted in a lack of oil lubrication and subsequent engine failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA261
- Event ID
- 20230626192453
- Case number
- CEN23LA261
- 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: d1e0e81a2f9b2586912ac2222c13e7f68e150968d2de9732bf9ff8d00f13584b; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:46:14.678Z.