ATL96FA114 · Cessna TU206A
Cessna TU206A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) to Mark Anton Airport (2A0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96FA114
- 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
- 1 · 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 TU206A
- 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
- N4813F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Charlotte, NCTo Mark Anton Airport (2A0), Dayton, TN
- 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
- Stall; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, piston › Disintegrated
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was at 8000 feet, in cruise flight, when the pilot reported a total loss of engine power and smoke in the cockpit. Air Traffic Control gave the pilot vectors to Sloan Airport, a small, private airstrip, north of Greer. The pilot was unable to locate the single east-west grass strip and attempted an emergency landing in a pasture approximately 0.7 nautical miles (nm) north of Sloan. The airplane struck a tree bordering the pasture and struck terrain beyond the tree, coming to rest inverted. The engine was examined and revealed that the number 3 piston had maximum mechanical damage and the least heat damage. The number 3 piston pin was found wedged in the left crankcase half, jammed against the number 2 main bearing support. The metallurgists report indicated that the number 3 piston had deteriorated in flight for undetermined reasons.
Probable cause
The disintegration of the number 3 piston, and the pilot's inadequate selection of terrain for the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96FA114
- Event ID
- 20001208X06412
- Case number
- ATL96FA114
- 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: 625ed2afcf30cd227916776f238886a83382d7c449a27ae05f1adfa57017d20a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:14:52.815Z.