CEN25LA357 · Piper PA-24-250
Espyess Aviation Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Charlevoix Municipal Airport (CVX) to Toledo Suburban Airport (DUH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA357
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7412P
- Operator
- Espyess Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlevoix Municipal Airport (CVX), Charlevoix, MITo Toledo Suburban Airport (DUH), Lambertville, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1961)
- 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 (partial)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 28, 2025, at about 1550 eastern daylight time, a Piper PA-24-250 airplane, N7412P, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Gregory, Michigan. The pilot was seriously injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 91 personal flight. The pilot reported that he and the airplane owner flew the airplane from the Toledo Suburban Airport (DUH), Lambertville, Michigan, to the Charlevoix Municipal Airport (CVX), Charlevoix, Michigan, where he dropped off the airplane owner. He then re-boarded the airplane to return to DUH alone. He reported that the flight from DUH to CVX was uneventful, as was the flight from CVX toward DUH, until about 1:20 into the flight. At this time the engine suddenly stopped producing power. The pilot was in communication with air traffic control (ATC) and reported the power loss. The controller provided the pilot with options for nearby airports and the pilot elected to attempt a landing at the Richmond Field Airport (69G), near Gregory, Michigan. The airplane came to rest in a field just south of 69G and a post-impact fire ensued which consumed the cabin portion of the airplane. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed extensive fire damage. Initially the engine could not be rotated; however, after removal of the fire damaged accessories and accessory housing on the back of the engine, the remainder of the engine was free to rotate. Thumb compression was verified on all cylinder and valve continuity was verified. All of the accessory case gears were intact. The engine still had an unknown amount of oil that drained out of the broken crankcase during the examination. Examination of the accessory case components revealed that the vacuum pump drive shaft, the tachometer drive shaft, and the oil pump drive shaft were seized in their bores. Disassembly of the accessory case components did not reveal any anomalies and the seizures were consistent with the fire damage. The rear mounted magnetos were extensively damaged by the postimpact fire and were unable to be tested.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA357
- Event ID
- 20250902200924
- Case number
- CEN25LA357
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: d35e4ea0bd916b28cbb737756c859dafed250c0d27ce984de7d42049ea7336a0; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:17:58.589Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Typo in city name; narrative states Toledo Suburban Airport (DUH), Lambertville, Michigan.