MIA99LA164 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From 47J · Cheraw, SC to Charleston Executive Airport (JZI)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA164
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N1982Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 47J · Cheraw, SCTo Charleston Executive Airport (JZI), Charleston, SC
- 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, cylinder › Separation
- Unknown › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 4,500 feet, the engine lost partial power. About 4 minutes later the engine lost all power. About 9 minutes after initial loss of engine power, while making a forced landing, the aircraft touched down in a tobacco field, overran the field, crossed a road, and came to rest in a ditch. Postcrash examination of the engine showed the cylinders had been installed with sealing compound under the bases. The No. 2 cylinder hold down studs had lost torque and failed, and the cylinder had separated from the engine case. Subsequently, the No. 1 and No. 2 connecting rods broke loose from the crankshaft and the engine seized. Engine records indicated the engine had been overhauled about 12 years and 1,257 flight hours before the failure. No entries show removal and re-installation of the cylinders after the engine overhaul. The engine was last inspected 64 flight hours before the accident.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the improper installation and in-flight separation of an engine cylinder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA164
- Event ID
- 20001212X19056
- Case number
- MIA99LA164
- 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 1999-06-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2be3a731480f394333ccdedfeffc626c8a17d0edee7028f56a49fcb93f90f81d; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:31:19.613Z.