CHI99LA333 · Cessna 172K
Cessna 172K · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Beatrice Municipal Airport (BIE) to Crete Municipal Airport (CEK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA333
- 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 172K
- 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
- N84385
- Operator
- Mark Chase
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beatrice Municipal Airport (BIE), Beatrice, NETo Crete Municipal Airport (CEK), Crete, NE
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Lubricating system › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted terrain during a night forced landing after experiencing a loss of engine power. The pilot also stated that the engine was running so rough that it felt as if it had half a propeller and that he could not read the airspeed indicator or altimeter. He circled twice over an unlit gravel road and then touched down twice on the road before impacting a sign. The pilot stated that he made the landing with 15 degrees of flaps and not full flaps since it took two hands to fly the aircraft because of the vibration. Examination of the engine revealed that the engine oil dipstick guide tube was loose which resulted in a loss of engine oil.
Probable cause
the loose oil dipstick guide tube resulting in loss of oil and the engine failure. The night condition was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA333
- Event ID
- 20001212X19709
- Case number
- CHI99LA333
- 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 1999-09-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4032cea63c6272f976243f003657e6a4dac29801816636cc0a93ecb0e6dca6f8; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:11:44.592Z.