WPR24LA210 · Lancair Company LC42-550FG
Lancair Company LC42-550FG · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Murray Field (EKA) to APA · Napa, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA210
- 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
Lancair Company LC42-550FG
- Aircraft type
- Lancair LC42
- 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
- N141PB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Murray Field (EKA), Eureka, CATo APA · Napa, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2005)
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
Shortly after takeoff, the engine lost most of its oil, resulting in a partial engine seizure and a total loss of engine power. During a forced landing to a soft field, the airplane nosed over, sustaining substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and fuselage.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that a rocker cover gasket was misaligned before the accident. The gasket was unable to maintain an adequate seal and opened during the accident flight. Oil was then ejected out of the gap between the rocker cover and cylinder head, which resulted in oil exhaustion.
Maintenance that was performed about 20 flight hours before the accident flight would have included installing the gasket. Maintenance instructions required a series of specific steps to install the gasket; based on the condition of the gasket after the accident, the instructions were likely not followed properly.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s incorrect installation of an engine rocker cover gasket, which resulted in oil exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power during the initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA210
- Event ID
- 20240624194542
- Case number
- WPR24LA210
- 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: a2f63dc7ab2092c85586b00e2142c03504406fb5fc833e81af4ed7b4124c84ce; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:57:49.277Z.