FTW97LA035 · Stinson 108-3
Stinson 108-3 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Cherokee County Airport (JSO) to Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA035
- 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
Stinson 108-3
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N798C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherokee County Airport (JSO), Jacksonville, TXTo Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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, crankshaft › Failure
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Tyler, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he observed the 'tachometer RPM changing drastically' while the airplane was on a 2 to 2.5 mile extended downwind leg for landing on runway 13. The pilot reported the anomaly to the tower, advising that he needed to land. The tower controller immediately issued the pilot a clearance to execute a left turn and proceed for a straight-in approach to runway 17. The pilot further stated that about 30 seconds after turning for runway 17, the engine started 'to make a loud popping and backfiring noise,' followed by total loss of power. The pilot notified the controller of his predicament and advised that he would not be able to reach the runway. The pilot elected to land the airplane on a nearby field to the right of his course, approximately 1.5 miles north of the threshold for runway 17. During the landing roll, the main gear hit a drainage ditch along the side of a road that crossed the field, and the airplane nosed over. Examination and teardown of the engine revealed that the crankshaft had failed in a heavy cast area (web) between the #1 and #2 rod journals.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to failure of the crankshaft. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA035
- Event ID
- 20001208X07027
- Case number
- FTW97LA035
- 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: c84b20739a892a9870fe7f2560b0775e0065a9e8e88224c5ebd9899e290668c7; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:49:44.043Z.