DEN99TA099 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN) to Q39 · Creede, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99TA099
- 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
- N4211C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NMTo Q39 · Creede, CO
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, engine power dropped to idle. The pilot made a forced landing in a field 3 miles north of the airport. A mechanic from the airport examined the engine and discovered the throttle cable had become disconnected from the throttle linkage due to looseness of the nut and bolt. While the mechanic made the necessary repairs, the pilot examined the field and determined he had sufficient clearance for take off. After repairs were made, the pilot attempted to take off. As the airplane lifted off, the left main landing gear struck a mound of dirt. The impact sheared the mounting bolt and the left main landing gear fell off the airplane. The pilot flew back to the airport and landed with the airplane coming to rest on its left wing tip.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate visual lookout and failure to see and avoid a ground obstruction. Factors were the throttle linkage becoming disconnected due to an inadequate annual inspection by maintenance personnel, and a dirt berm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99TA099
- Event ID
- 20001212X18987
- Case number
- DEN99TA099
- 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: 1618fc9a6b892e64f2a8713cfd3218c0d828a903763566cd4a2758ca156321d9; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:55:03.527Z.