ATL88LA206 · Cessna 172M
Cornerstone Aviation Cessna 172M · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU) to Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL88LA206
- 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 172M
- 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
- N1534V
- Operator
- Cornerstone Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU), Greenville, SCTo Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG), Bowling Green, KY
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT REPORTED THAT THE ENGINE BEGAN TO RUN ROUGH & LOSE POWER AS THE AIRPLANE CLIMBED THROUGH 9,000 FT MSL. SHE THEN SWITCHED FUEL TANKS AND MOVED THE MIXTURE TO FULL RICH, BUT THE ENGINE CONTINUED TO LOSE POWER. CARB HEAT WAS NOT USED AT ANY TIME. A FORCED LDG WAS SUBSEQUENTLY MADE IN A FIELD WHERE THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH A UTILITY POLE AND A DITCH. POST-CRASH EXAM OF THE ENGINE REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF PREEXISTING MECHANICAL FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION. EXAMINATION OF AN ICING PROBABILITY CHART REVEALED THAT THE REPORTED WX CONDITIONS IN THE AREA WERE FAVORABLE FOR THE FORMATION OF MODERATE CARBURETOR ICING AT CRUISE POWER. THE CESSNA 172M OWNER'S MANUAL NOTES THAT A GRADUAL LOSS IN RPM AND EVENTUAL ENGINE ROUGHNESS MAY RESULT FROM THE FORMATION OF CARB ICE, AND PRESCRIBES THE USE OF CARB HEAT TO CLEAR THE ICE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL88LA206
- Event ID
- 20001213X26121
- Case number
- ATL88LA206
- 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: 36883ce1f3f222a954026bbc37b87b0b4374220c67df8d86fb0ca1984e581c95; retrieved 2026-09-23T09:48:25.017Z.