LAX96FA155 · Cessna 182RG
Cessna 182RG · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN) to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA155
- 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 182RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N600CT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), Grand Canyon, AZTo Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NV
- 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)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While flying at 12,500 feet msl over a mountainous area, the engine propeller began to overspeed, and then the engine quit. The pilot executed an emergency landing, and the airplane collided with a tree. Examination of the engine revealed that Nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6 connecting rods separated and their journals displayed oil starvation and high temperature distress signatures. The examination also showed that the oil consumption emanated from the No. 6 cylinder. The airplane squawk list and previous fueling records showed that the engine had a high oil consumption rate. The pilot that flew the airplane on a flight a week before the accident reported that in a 5-hour flight, the engine consumed 10 quarts of oil. One of the passengers reported that she saw the pilot check the oil before departing on the accident flight. The accident pilot said that the oil level was between 7 and 8 quarts before departing on the accident flight; he told his insurers that the oil level was about 5 quarts before departing on the last segment of the accident flight. The pilot said that he checked the oil by pulling the dipstick once. The pilot that previously flew the airplane said that he had to insert and remove the oil dipstick three times before obtaining an accurate level. He said that the oil viscosity on the dipstick tube was so thick it indicated a higher level.
Probable cause
an engine failure due to oil starvation resulting from the pilot's improper aircraft preflight. A factor relating to the accident was: failure of the operator to ascertain that proper maintenance was performed after the airplane's high oil consumption rate was reported.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA155
- Event ID
- 20001208X05595
- Case number
- LAX96FA155
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-04-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b639a2ed4cac43431e86f5858f69e1d1aca6838eef8732ef1c3fd4cccf576a54; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:49:48.433Z.