FTW96LA010 · Cessna 172N
Ellington Field Aero Club Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Ellington Airport (EFD) to Tyler County Airport (09R)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA010
- 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 172N
- 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
- N738DF
- Operator
- Ellington Field Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ellington Airport (EFD), Houston, TXTo Tyler County Airport (09R), Tyler, TX
- 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
- 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
- Ignition system, magneto › Malfunction
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was en route to Tyler, Texas, when the engine lost power. He reported activating carburetor heat, moving fuel selector from both to 'left or right', and trying to restart the engine. The engine did not start and he proceeded to make a forced landing. Upon touch down in a soft field the airplane nosed over coming to rest in the inverted position. Attempts to start the engine during a test run were not successful. Examination of the magnetos revealed that the contacts in both magnetos were not opening when the rotor was turned. The contacts were adjusted and the internal timing per manufactures maintenance manual was set. After reinstallation of the magnetos, the engine started and operated normally.
Probable cause
failure of both magnetos to operate properly due to inadequate maintenance by other maintenance personnel. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain available for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA010
- Event ID
- 20001207X04692
- Case number
- FTW96LA010
- 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: a470731e3023a27fadd8481c04c33a6b4a8fbd85919f8df39fd61dc614ae4564; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:02:49.346Z.