LAX99LA134 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to Camarillo International Airport (CMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA134
- 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
- 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
Cessna 172RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9451D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), MONTGOMERY, CATo Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · IFR initial approach
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Failure, total
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Separation
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor and instrument student were in level flight at 4,000 feet msl at the initial approach fix for a practice VOR approach. After hearing a loud bang in the engine compartment, smoke and flames were observed entering the cockpit by the rudder pedals. The instructor immediately turned the fuel selector valve to off and nosed the airplane over to land. The fire went out and he set up to land in a plowed field. He secured the airplane, opened the doors, and then executed a soft-field landing with full flaps. When the nose wheel dropped into the soft dirt after touchdown, it dug in and the airplane nosed over. The number two cylinder assembly with its intake and exhaust tubes exited through the cowling and were not recovered. Pieces of piston, compression ring, a push rod, and a piston pin were found in the cowling. The connecting rod fractured at a midpoint along both sides of the wrist pin. Mechanical continuity was established for the remaining engine cylinders, no discoloration was evident, and all fracture surfaces were grainy and angular.
Probable cause
The failure and separation of the number two cylinder for undetermined reasons. A factor was the soft terrain at the forced landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA134
- Event ID
- 20001205X00354
- Case number
- LAX99LA134
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: ef7d2f4d8a3506a2721770bb8593fd9fa14d7ab924a49dac8378900ad226472b; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:35:57.823Z.