LAX00LA258 · Cessna 205
Cessna 205 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM) to Sedona Airport (SEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA258
- 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 205
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 205
- 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
- N8154Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM), Yuma, AZTo Sedona Airport (SEZ), Sedona, AZ
- 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, piston › Fractured
- Engine assembly, ring › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a forced landing on a gravel road following a loss of engine power. The right wing struck a road sign. The flight had been airborne about 20 minutes and the pilot had established cruise flight. The engine made a loud noise, began to vibrate severely, and lost power. Post accident examination determined that the engine case fractured in the vicinity of the No. 6 cylinder, and the cylinder's base was displaced away from the case. The engine could not be rotated by hand, but oil was in the oil pan. The piston in cylinder No. 1 fractured and separated at the piston pin. The piston rod continued to rotate, which fractured the camshaft in half and separated both magnetos. The piston rings in cylinder No. 1 fractured and scored the interior wall of the cylinder in the direction of the cylinder stroke. There was no discoloration of the engine components or other signs of oil starvation. There was no mechanical damage on the piston face that indicated the possibility of a stuck valve. The airplane received an annual inspection 1 month prior to the accident, and all airworthiness directives and required inspections had been complied with. The manufacturer recommends that this engine model should be overhauled at 1,500 hours, and this engine had over 1,820 hours since overhaul.
Probable cause
The piston and rings in cylinder No. 1 failed resulting in a total loss of engine power. The pilot made a forced landing on a road and the airplane's wing collided with a road sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA258
- Event ID
- 20001212X21504
- Case number
- LAX00LA258
- 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: 978cce35d101840d8217f0f1e1267e309d5efa0b48e2b50f623c1cb195ec6644; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:44:03.081Z.