CHI98FA106 · Cessna U206G
Cessna U206G · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From 3IP · Independence, MO to 3GV
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA106
- 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
- 6 · 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 U206G
- 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
- N506SD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3IP · Independence, MOTo 3GV
- 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)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure, total
- Fluid, oil › Loss, partial
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The parachute jump flight's airplane was at 3,700 feet MSL when the pilot cancelled the operation with the FAA approach controller without explanation. Witnesses observed the airplane trailing white and black smoke. One witness said he saw the airplane trailing black smoke with its engine making a banging sound. Three witnesses at the accident airport said the airplane had smoke and flames coming from the airplane's cowl and along the windshield as it approached the airport. They said the airplane banked right at a low altitude with its right wingtip striking the ground. The airplane caught fire during the collision sequence. The on-scene investigation revealed the engine, left side of the fuselage, bottom of left wing and its strut and the horizontal stabilizer and elevator were covered with oil film. The engine's oil filler tube was missing. The three filler tube mounting screws were not found at the accident site. Two of the 3 filler tube screw mounting holes had 2 of the screw threads next to the engine case's exterior surface pulled upward. The third screw hole threads were not pulled. The number 6 cylinder valve rocker arm cover had 5 of its 6 screws missing. The remaining screw was loose. The number 6 cylinder's bottom spark plug lead nut was disconnected. Its threads were not pulled. Examination of the engine revealed about 70 percent of the oil screen was covered by silver and bronze colored metallic debris. Holes were observed on the engine's left crankcase section near cylinders number 2 and 6. The engine's internal components suffered damage typical of oil loss and heat distress. The fracture face features on the engine's fractured left crankcase section were typical of overstress.
Probable cause
Pilot's inadequate preflight, the partial loss of oil and the resulting rod failure. A factor was the pilot's failure to maintain flying speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA106
- Event ID
- 20001211X09633
- Case number
- CHI98FA106
- 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: 029f2bd75743cc1690fba8e4bf0044a444ebdcb05c4fb00aa9a38fcd9404bad1; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:39:00.211Z.