ERA26LA176 · Icon A5
Icon A5 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (TJAB) to Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA176
- 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
Icon A5
- Aircraft type
- Icon A5
- 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
- N558BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (TJAB), Arecibo, PRTo Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG), San Juan, PR
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2022)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the amphibious airplane was approaching the destination airport, the engine lost oil pressure shortly before losing power completely. Unable to glide to the airport, the pilot elected to conduct a forced landing to a nearby bay. Due to the rough water conditions, the landing was hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and empennage.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that that the oil line that connected the oil pump housing to the oil cooler had separated from the oil cooler adapter at the barbed end of the B-nut assembly. The respective clamp, which was supposed to secure the oil line past the barbed fitting, was not recovered. It is possible that the clamp was not completely secured past the barbed fitting when the new, upgraded engine was installed onto the airplane about 1 year prior to the accident; however, the clamp could not be located after the accident, so the preseparation position and condition of the clamp could not be determined.
Probable cause
An oil line separation at a barbed fitting in an experimental airplane, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA176
- Event ID
- 20260416202832
- Case number
- ERA26LA176
- 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: 93c30bbf4fabe62ef07ff3ff228d42a4d8c8c79712b403eabd2483cbf1d91b55; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:15:37.608Z.