LAX00LA069 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to L12 · Redlands, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA069
- 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 177B
- 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
- N34021
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), PACOIMA, CATo L12 · Redlands, 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 · 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
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
- Lubricating system, oil filter/screen › Undertorqued
- Other maintenance personnel › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident flight was the first flight following an oil change. While in cruise flight about 38 minutes after takeoff, the engine began to run roughly and the oil pressure dropped to zero. The engine then completely lost power and the pilot attempted to land at the airport. He touched down short of the runway and collided with a fence. During the postaccident examination, oil was evident on the firewall, rear engine case area, and in the area of the oil pressure screen housing, streaming aft on the underside of the aircraft and on the forward edge of both landing gear struts. The screws that attach the oil pressure screen were observed to be improperly secured; there was no discernible torque required to loosen the screws. The oil pressure screen had been removed during the oil change. The improperly torqued oil screen housing bolts resulted in the loss of oil, and the number 2 cylinder connecting rod bearing failure and overheating of the connecting rod. The connecting rod released from the crankshaft journal and punctured the upper left crankcase, damaging the adjacent components.
Probable cause
The failure of the maintenance personnel to follow the manufacturer's procedures and directives regarding the proper torquing of the screws securing the oil pressure screen housing, which resulted in the loss of lubricating oil, and the subsequent seizure of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA069
- Event ID
- 20001212X20385
- Case number
- LAX00LA069
- 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 2000-01-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 934dda3f5b61ad80dd860b283ad06de4f408b8efcc13c9d61089cbc6c8e0daf1; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:26:08.791Z.