CHI95LA225 · Cessna 206
Cessna 206 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From ISN to Lethbridge County Airport (YQL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA225
- 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 206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N29000
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ISNTo Lethbridge County Airport (YQL), Lethbridge, CAN
- 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 · climb to 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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, piston › Failure
- Fuel system, pump › Pressure too low
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Williston, ND, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he noticed an engine vibration about 10 minutes after takeoff, and returned to Williston to make a precautionary landing. While approaching the downwind leg for runway 29 the engine seized. He was unable to make a runway landing so he attempted to land on the airport property. He saw hay bales and equipment where he intended to land, and manuevered to avoid the bales. The airplane stalled in a near level attitude, impacting the runway berm. Examination of the engine revealed that the fuel system was running rich at low power settings, but lean at high power settings. The fuel pump was delivering 22 psi of fuel pressure instead of the 34 psi specified. The examination of the number four piston revealed that it was severely eroded around the perimeter of the piston, typical of combustion chamber detonation.
Probable cause
engine failure due to low fuel pressure at high power settings and subsequent detonation. A factor was an evasive maneuver to avoid obstacles which precipitated a stall. Additional factors include the hay bales, farm equipment, and the runway berm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA225
- Event ID
- 20001207X03900
- Case number
- CHI95LA225
- 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: fd42c76421e7a2b6cafa9771953b28332079f294a987b73f5974438b7480730c; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:36:21.654Z.