WPR25LA030 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA030
- 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
Piper PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N154DC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1969)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a local flight to try to replicate a fuel mixture leaning problem he experienced on the previous flight. The pilot experienced the leaning issues again and recognized unusual exhaust gas temperature (EGT) and fuel flow readings during the flight, so he elected to return to the airport. During the return to the airport the pilot heard two loud “booms” before the engine lost total power. Shortly after, smoke and flames appeared inside the cabin near the forward right floorboard. The pilot successfully extinguished the fire and performed a forced landing to an open field. The forward right area of the fuselage was substantially damaged. Examination of the engine revealed the No. 3 cylinder had separated from the engine case; the No. 3 connecting rod had fractured and mechanical damage was found to the engine case, camshaft, and crankshaft. Five of the eight No. 3 cylinder base nuts were not located. The examination revealed signs of fretting between both engine case halves, as well as on each of the six cylinder’s hold-down plates, consistent with a loss of torque of the engine case nuts and bolts and the cylinder base nuts. No other pre-impact anomalies were noted with the engine. Damage to the engine was consistent with the No. 3 cylinder base nuts losing their torque and the nuts coming off the studs, which enabled the cylinder barrel to come off the cylinder piston, resulting in mechanical damage to the studs, No. 3 connecting rod, engine case, camshaft, and crankshaft. The damage resulted in a fire originating in the engine compartment. Although the investigation did not determine why there was a loss of torque of the engine case nuts and bolts or the cylinder base nuts, the engine had operated about 72 hours since undergoing an annual inspection. FAA guidance for an annual inspection includes an inspection for visual evidence of excessive oil, fuel, or hydraulic leaks, and sources of such leaks, and directs inspection of engine studs and nuts for improper torquing. Accordingly, any improperly torqued engine studs or nuts should have been identified by the annual inspection.
Probable cause
Separation of the No. 3 engine cylinder due to a loss of torque on the cylinder base nuts, which resulted in a loss of engine power and in-flight fire. Contributing to the accident was maintenance personnel’s failure to ensure the engine case and cylinder base nuts were properly torqued during the most recent annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA030
- Event ID
- 20241105195446
- Case number
- WPR25LA030
- 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: 747b8782e28309b065bcad711ac6e1a6ca39c46c53cb47b3462375fb598d6158; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:27:02.427Z.