WPR24LA064 · Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40
453DS Aircraft Leasing Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA064
- 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
Diamond Aircraft IND Inc DA 40
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-40
- 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
- N453DS
- Operator
- 453DS Aircraft Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2011)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 was conducting a local flight when he heard a loud noise and saw objects eject from the engine area followed by a total loss of power. The pilot saw that the oil pressure had dropped to zero and the oil pressure alarm was sounding. He performed an emergency engine shutdown and made a forced landing at a nearby airport. During the descent smoke entered the cockpit, likely due to an inflight fire. During the landing roll, the nose gear collapsed as the airplane came to a stop on the runway. The two occupants egressed the airplane unassisted. The inflight fire thermally damaged the airframe from the engine back to the aft end of the cockpit. Postaccident examination revealed the left magneto mounting hardware had backed out on the studs, which allowed the magneto to separate from the mounting pad on the accessory case. The open magneto mounting pad allowed the engine oil to escape until the oil sump was depleted of oil. The engine damage that consisted of multiple large fractures to the engine cases, and extensive damage to the valvetrain and the rotating and reciprocating group, was consistent with lubrication deprivation. The magneto was installed on the engine the day before the accident and had accumulated about 5.6 hours of flight time between the installation and the accident. The pilot reported the oil level at preflight inspection to be just above the 6-quart line and did not observe the oil pressure out of the normal range during the flight before hearing the loud noise.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper installation of the left magneto, which resulted in oil starvation to the engine and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA064
- Event ID
- 20231227193572
- Case number
- WPR24LA064
- 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: f524eaf0f00863fd9ca6276c8b95ca95e32dcf1b2e7dec1587cf652f46e22888; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:23:36.974Z.