CEN26LA030 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Las Cruces International Airport (LRU) to Albertville Regional Airport/Thomas J Brumlik Field (BFZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA030
- 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
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N46CR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Las Cruces International Airport (LRU), Las Cruces, NMTo Albertville Regional Airport/Thomas J Brumlik Field (BFZ), Albertville, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1986)
- 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
- 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
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 October 26, 2025, about 918 mountain daylight time, a Piper PA46-310P, N46CR, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near El Paso, Texas. The pilot and two passengers were not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The pilot reported he was climbing to his enroute cruise altitude when the engine made a loud bang, followed by decreasing temperature readings and a low oil pressure warning. The pilot declared an emergency, requested vectors to the nearest airport, and performed the engine failure emergency checklist. The pilot assessed different landing options before deciding on a north-south dirt road. The airplane touched down about 500 feet before a steep incline in the road. The pilot applied heavy braking until he spotted a 3 foot hole in the road, at which time he released the brakes and applied full aft elevator. All three landing gear separated from the airplane as the airplane went into and past the hole in the road. The wings and fuselage were substantially damaged. Once the airplane came to rest, the pilot shut down the electrical systems and began evacuation of the occupants through the emergency exit. The main door had become blocked by a tree and some brush. Post accident examination of the airplane revealed a hole in the top of the crankcase by the number two cylinder. The magneto above the hole was dislodged from its mounting point. Clean looking oil was present on the dipstick. The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA030
- Event ID
- 20251027201923
- Case number
- CEN26LA030
- 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: 097bbb772ed08255017a46e189c2818c619dbe55767a4b2f47ce3f5df1f81bc4; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:30:29.301Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The city slot holds the airport name; LRU is Las Cruces International Airport, whose city is Las Cruces, NM.