FTW96LA384 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA384
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N2797V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)To not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
- Propeller system/accessories, governor › Improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A factory overhauled engine had been installed in the airplane and the pilot took off on a maintenance test flight. Eleven minutes later, the pilot reported a 'runaway prop.' The engine seized shortly thereafter. The pilot attempted to return to the airport, but was too far away. He selected a soccer field on which to make a forced landing, but misjudged his airspeed and altitude and overshot. The pilot landed on a street and collided with two vehicles. Removal of the propeller governor disclosed maintenance personnel had failed to install one of two required gaskets and a governor pad as required by Textron Lycoming Service Instruction No. 1438, dated July 9, 1987. This allowed engine oil to be depleted.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the propeller governor by company maintenance personnel, resulting in the total loss of oil and engine seizure. Factors were the pilot's misjudgment of altitude and airspeed, causing him to make a forced landing on unsuitable terrain and collide with a tree and motor vehicles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA384
- Event ID
- 20001208X06730
- Case number
- FTW96LA384
- 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: 776fe12f2dfe37385b1861e61c46d1f5fbbc02813ee968a99e919c740624158f; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:11:11.024Z.