IAD97LA093 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN) to Southbridge Municipal Airport (3B0)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA093
- 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 A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N39CC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN), Keene, NHTo Southbridge Municipal Airport (3B0), Southbridge, MA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Charlton, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, shortly after takeoff about 400 feet AGL, the engine lost power. Despite his efforts of switching the electric fuel boost pump on, he was unable to restart the engine, and a forced landing was performed to a swampy, wooded area. The airplane had accumulated over 2225 hours of flight time including 4 hours since the annual inspection that was completed 4 days prior to the accident. At the inspection, the engine was replaced with a zero time factory rebuilt engine. The left main fuel tank, electric fuel boost pump, and the fuel collector drain were also replaced. According to the FAA, during the postaccident engine test run, the engine driven fuel pump operated satisfactory. When full power was added, and the electric fuel boost pump was turned on, the engine operated satisfactory
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons..
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA093
- Event ID
- 20001208X08156
- Case number
- IAD97LA093
- 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: 1ee6bc894f63a8086783ebaf89e7438e9735a5d4a930d2fe68ce376bed1d5069; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:24:10.985Z.