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Atlas / NTSB / CEN10LA272

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event CEN10LA272

2010-05-27 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States Airport · HSD None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N128AF

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

ROBINSON HELICOPTER R44 II

Year of manufacture

2006 · 4 years old at event

TCDS

H11NM · ROBINSON HELICOPTER CO

Engine

LYCOMING IO-540-AE1A5 (260 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20210209

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A07170

Registrant of record

SUMMERSKYZ INC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The failure of the master rod bearing, which resulted in a loss of engine power.

Factual narrative

On May 27, 2010, about 2010 central daylight time, a North American T-28A airplane, N128AF, was substantially damaged following a loss of engine power and subsequent forced landing at Sundance Airpark (HSD), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The commercial pilot and the certified flight instructor were not injured. The local, personal flight was being conducted under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 without a flight plan. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The pilots stated they were flying in the traffic pattern when the engine started losing power. They were unable to make the runway and landed short of the prepared surface. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the main landing gear had punctured both wings, damaging the spars, and two engine mounts had pulled loose from the firewall. Fuel was found in both wings and the fuel selector was in the BOTH position. Metal material was found in the outer casing of the oil filter. According to one of the airplane’s owners, the engine was later disassembled for salvage and the master rod bearing was found failed and several of the cylinders had seized. According to maintenance records, the engine’s last major overhaul occurred on August 15, 1989. The last annual inspection occurred on December 5, 2009, at 77.7 hours time since major overhaul. According to the operator of the airplane, it had accumulated 99.9 hours time since major overhaul at the time of the accident. The pilots stated that they were flying in the traffic pattern when the airplane's engine started losing power. They were unable to reach the runway and landed short of the prepared surface. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the main landing gear had punctured both wings, damaging the spars, and two of the engine mounts had pulled loose from the firewall. Metal material was found in the outer casing of the oil filter. According to one of the airplane’s owners, the engine was later disassembled for salvage, and the master rod bearing was found to have failed. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • C Aircraft-Aircraft power plant-Engine (reciprocating)-Recip engine power section-Failure - C

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2010_CEN10LA272.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗