Piper Grounds Model; Engine Stoppages Cited

The Piper Aircraft Corp. has voluntarily grounded its most popular single-engine plane after a series of incidents in which the Piper Malibu’s engine lost power during flight, company officials said Wednesday.

The grounding, made official in a bulletin sent to plane owners Tuesday, came two days after a Piper Malibu trying to make an emergency landing at Long Beach Municipal Airport slammed onto the San Diego Freeway. The pilot was killed and a passenger survived with burns over 60% of his body.

But Piper officials said the grounding did not stem from the Long Beach accident, and noted that federal authorities have yet to determine what caused that crash.

“We made the decision before that incident,” said J. Earle Boyter, the Vero Beach, Fla., firm’s director of marketing.

Boyter said the decision followed incidents that he described as “engine stoppages.” Pilots involved in the incidents were able to land their planes, and no deaths or injuries resulted, he said. No details were released.

The company’s owner, M. Stuart Millar, said that Piper grounded the planes because the firm had “not received a satisfactory explanation” from the engine’s builder about the cause of the problems.

“Some may say this is an overreaction on Piper’s part, but so be it,” the firm’s statement said. “Our overriding concern is the well-being of our customers.”

Susan Brane, a spokeswoman for Teledyne Continental, maker of the Malibu engine, told the Associated Press that the company had “identified a recent engine problem as a broken piston pin” and would send a directive to affected owners.

About 380 of the $300,000 Malibus have been sold since they went into production in 1984. About 50 of the planes are believed to be in the Los Angeles area, Boyter said.

The Piper bulletin asked Malibu owners to refrain from flying their aircraft until a further directive is issued. Piper said it will reimburse pilots and passengers for transportation costs if the grounding forces them to take commercial airplanes on a planned trip. Further information is available to owners through a toll-free number, 1-800-72PIPER.