SEA98LA096 · Cessna 172R
Northwest Aircraft Rental Cessna 172R · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From 3S2 · Aurora, OR to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA096
- 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 172R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9514P
- Operator
- Northwest Aircraft Rental
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3S2 · Aurora, ORTo 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
- 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
- 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, cylinder › Cracked
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the climb-out following a touch-and-go landing, the engine began to run rough, followed by smoke/oil spray issuing from the engine compartment. Shortly thereafter, he heard a loud bang and executed a forced landing in deep grass and vegetation. During the landing roll, the airplane nosed down, and the left wing was damaged. FAA on site examination revealed oil pooled beneath the engine and oil spray within the engine compartment. The examination also revealed a crack in the steel barrel of the #4 cylinder. The #4 cylinder was removed for analysis. Optical examination of the apparent fracture surfaces on cylinder #4 uncovered fracture markings, arrest lines and deformation patterns consistent with fatigue progression over the entire surface of the original crack. The cause of the metal smearing and hairline cracks most likely was induced during the turning operation when cutting tools had become worn. It was concluded that the surface features were of a nature non-detectable by existing non-destructive testing processes.
Probable cause
A loss of power due to fatigue failure and cracking of an engine cylinder barrel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA096
- Event ID
- 20001211X10427
- Case number
- SEA98LA096
- 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: 21402e356554113c4dbcc039444ef24a5faad1f48726d66988a5e06c5857279a; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:40:46.338Z.