ERA24LA109 · Piper PA23 150
Piper PA23 150 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during initial climb
From Bowman Field (LOU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA109
- 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
Piper PA23 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA23
- 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
- N1317P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1955)
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 structures
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After recently completed maintenance, and the pilot and pilot-rated passenger decided to take the airplane for a test flight. Both occupants reported that a preflight inspection was completed and that no anomalies were noted during the preflight. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot and passenger noticed that a large part of the right engine nacelle cover had departed from the airplane. They requested to return to land at the airport and made a subsequent uneventful landing. The pilot reported that there were no adverse control issues observed during the return for landing. A subsequent inspection of the airplane revealed that the nacelle panel had impacted the right side of the horizontal stabilizer, resulting in substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the right engine nacelle revealed that most of the inspection panel had separated from the nacelle and was not located; however, a small portion of the outboard section of the panel remained attached to the engine nacelle. The remaining portion of the panel displayed significant wear around the camlock and screw retention holes; at least one of the retention screw holes was significantly larger than the retention screw head. While the missing portion of the of the inspection panel was not available for examination, it is likely that the screw holes on this portion were similarly worn. This wear should have been apparent to maintenance personnel when inspecting the airplane (but likely would have been obscured by the engine cowling and not visible during a pilot’s preflight inspection). Based on this information, it is likely, that when exposed to high airflow during departure, a portion of the panel pulled out of the retention fasteners and was pulled out into the airstream, resulting in most of the panel being torn from the airframe.
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to thoroughly inspect and repair the worn-out panel fasteners and fastener holes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA109
- Event ID
- 20240207193758
- Case number
- ERA24LA109
- 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: c2f45789ff41d15dbad233bc32be516afdf60233e787e071c67b23c96fda5d43; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:29:33.212Z.