LAX00LA019 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From 061 · Cameron Park, CA to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA019
- 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 TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N756LE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 061 · Cameron Park, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CA
- 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 · climb to 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Exhaust system, end plate › Eroded
- Exhaust system, muffler › Failure, total
- Faa(other/organization) › Procedure inadequate
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a VFR cross-country flight. While cruising at 9,500 feet msl, smoke filled the cockpit, coming from the engine compartment. The pilot was monitoring the local approach control. He declared an emergency and started a descent. He was unable, however, to see an airport in the immediate area due to limited forward visibility. He subsequently landed in a residential area under development and collided with two parked cars. Postaccident examination of the engine compartment revealed that the exhaust heater core aft end plate had failed and was open. The end plate was found in the engine compartment. The failure caused the right side exhaust to exit directly at the firewall, partially separated by the airplane battery and cabin air-mixing valve.
Probable cause
Inadequate maintenance inspection mandated by the FAA, and the inadequate design of the exhaust heater core/muffler and deflectors that failed to divert hot exhaust gasses away from the battery and cabin heat valve.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA019
- Event ID
- 20001212X19992
- Case number
- LAX00LA019
- 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: 629cbca015df675966be0fb2e7e02a589b1dc562d5946dd5d8113cda491934e1; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:51:56.719Z.