CHI96FA171 · Cessna 401
Cessna 401 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Garden City Regional Airport (GCK) to Mc Pherson Airport (MPR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA171
- 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 401
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 401
- 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
- N701CJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garden City Regional Airport (GCK), Garden City, KSTo Mc Pherson Airport (MPR), McPherson, KS
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Exhaust system, manifold/pipe › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the third flight of the day, he noticed a 5 to 6 inch drop in manifold pressure on the left engine. He noticed a brownish substance oozing out of the access panels and along the forward rivet line of the left wing. He secured the left engine. Prior to making an emergency landing at Great Bend, Kansas, 12 miles away, he noticed the right tank fuel gauge was indicating a rapid loss of fuel. Examination of the aircraft revealed that the left engine's inboard exhaust header had broken completely where it was covered by a heat shield and behind a canted bulkhead. Exhaust gases caused extensive heat damage to the engine support structure and firewall, and ruptured the right fuel tank crossfeed fuel line behind the left engine firewall. A 100=hour maintenance inspection had been conducted just 17 flight-hours prior to the accident. AD 75-23-08 R5 had been complied with. The AD requires a visual inspection of the exhaust system, but not a detailed inspection requiring disassembly of the system. As designed, it was not possible to visually inspect the exhaust system without disassembly.
Probable cause
the failure of the exhaust header. Additional factors include the visual restrictions which prevented a detailed examination of the exhaust system, and the inadequate inspection procedures required in AD 75-23-08 R5.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA171
- Event ID
- 20001208X05705
- Case number
- CHI96FA171
- 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: 1ac1ff5ebec4b5f31c70de1fcc2f829b00524853a9d456deffb1509581f38898; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:28:06.114Z.