SEA91LA212 · Cessna U206F
Evergreen Helicopters Cessna U206F · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Crescent Lake State Airport (5S2) to McMinnville Municipal Airport (MMV)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA91LA212
- 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 U206F
- 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
- N35831
- Operator
- Evergreen Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crescent Lake State Airport (5S2), CRESCENT LAKE, ORTo McMinnville Municipal Airport (MMV), McMinnville, OR
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fractured
- Powerplant › Seized
- Terrain condition › Rough/uneven
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHILE IN CRUISE FLIGHT THE ENGINE BEGAN RUNNING ROUGH AND ULTIMATELY SEIZED. THE PILOT EXECUTED A FORCED LANDING DURING DARK NIGHT CONDITIONS ONTO ROUGH AND UNEVEN TERRAIN WITHIN A LOGGING CLEARCUT AREA. DURING THE ROLLOUT THE NOSE GEAR WAS SHEARED OFF AND THE AIRCRAFT NOSED OVER TO AN INVERTED POSITION RESULTING IN SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGE. SUBSEQUENT DISASSEMBLY OF THE ENGINE REVEALED A FATIGUE CRACK WHICH GENERATED INTO A FRACTURE OF THE CRANKSHAFT. THE CRACK WAS OBSERVED TO EMANATE FROM THE OIL TUBE PASSAGE HOLE IN THE NUMBER FOUR SHORT CHEEK OF THE CRANKSHAFT.
Probable cause
THE FRACTURED CRANKSHAFT RESULTING IN ENGINE SEIZURE FOLLOWED BY A FORCED LANDING ON ROUGH AND UNEVEN TERRAIN RESULTING IN SEPARATION OF THE NOSE GEAR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA91LA212
- Event ID
- 20001212X17989
- Case number
- SEA91LA212
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1991-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c7b50380975be6f08c3cec3d583599da01fd9278cbf069b18fdf27a17a975f86; retrieved 2026-09-23T03:47:06.851Z.