ATL97LA136 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From FL (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA136
- 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N53172
- Operator
- Aduda & Sons
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FL (private airstrip)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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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)
- 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 › Fatigue
- Engine assembly, other › Undertorqued
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, top overhaul, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, a loss of engine power occurred, while he was applying insecticide to a farm. A force landing was made in a plowed field. During the landing, the airplane encountered a small ditch in soft terrain, and the airplane nosed over. Examination of the maintenance records revealed that a top overhaul of the engine had been accomplished, 7 days before the accident. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed a fractured crankshaft. Multiple origin sites of the fracture were found from the surface of the journal radius. There was evidence that inadequate torque had been applied to the crankcase through-bolts. The #2 main bearing had moved fore and aft in the bearing bore and had rotated in the crankcase; there was heavy fretting at the #2 and #3 main bearing boss parting surfaces; and there was evidence of severe pounding from lack of support that had started a breakup of the #2 bearing.
Probable cause
failure of mechanics to adequately torque the crankcase through-bolts following a top overhaul, which subsequently resulted in a crankshaft failure. Soft/uneven terrain in the emergency landing area was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA136
- Event ID
- 20001208X08788
- Case number
- ATL97LA136
- 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: c785f5d776f1fff6f15ecc9c0826745fad5158ce93fa901cc3ed7ca70a11f8ce; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:08:35.959Z.