SEA99LA046 · Cessna 205
Cessna 205 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Bellingham International Airport (BLI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA046
- 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 205
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 205
- 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
- N8464K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bellingham International Airport (BLI), Bellingham, WATo not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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, crankshaft › Fatigue
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Separation
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, and while cruising at 3,000 feet (mean sea level) over Samish Bay, the Cessna 205's Continental IO-470-S engine ceased developing power. With the propeller continuing to windmill, and only muddy fields available, the pilot initiated a forced landing to a north/south paved road at the south end of the bay. The pilot, observing power lines along the west side of the road, landed along the east side. During the landing roll the left wing impacted a sign. With the pilot being unable to maintain directional control of the aircraft following the sign impact, the aircraft departed the left side of the road into a deep ditch. Post-crash examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft had separated at the number six cheek. Metallurgical examination of the crankshaft revealed that a large area in the central portion of number six cheek fracture surface displayed a smooth texture and contained multiple crack arrest features, characteristic of fatigue progression originating at the outboard flat surface of the crankcheek, approximately at the mid point between the horizontal centerlines for the main and rod journals. No further determination could be made regarding the initiating condition of the fatigue due to post-separation heat and mechanical damage to the fracture features.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fatigue of the number six crankcheek resulting in crankshaft separation, and the lack of suitable terrain. Contributing factors were the sign and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA046
- Event ID
- 20001205X00560
- Case number
- SEA99LA046
- 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: c4ecfeb02524bcb9a03e783e5ec4b98dec2f0e5afd784673589bb24937e27f57; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:34:40.513Z.