FTW02LA079 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA079
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 172N
- 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
- N75616
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NMTo Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), Santa Fe, NM
- 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
- Partial 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
- Ignition system, magneto › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After reaching the intended cruise altitude during an instructional cross-country flight, the flight instructor noticed the airplane was not accelerating to the desired cruise speed. Within one or two minutes, after adjusting the mixture and applying carbuerator heat, the engine began to operate rough. The student pilot turned the airplane back toward the departure airport. As the flight proceeded, the engine roughness and power loss amplified. Approximately 9 miles southeast of the airport, the flight instructor elected to execute a precautionary landing to a dirt road. During the precautionary landing, the airplane touched down on the nose landing gear, and after impacting a ditch, the nose gear separated. The airplane then nosed over and came to rest inverted. During an examination of the engine, the single-drive dual magneto's lower timing inspection port was removed and approximately 2 cups of engine oil drained from the magneto. It was determined that the magneto driveshaft oil seal had failed allowing engine oil to enter the magneto. At the time of the accident, the engine had accumulated 2,030 hours since major overhaul.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power as result of the failure of the dual magneto. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the precautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA079
- Event ID
- 20020212X00208
- Case number
- FTW02LA079
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4a2e3571e83ba917fc52b186c2075e239134c596a3eea6bb68457e10c4178201; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:08:13.690Z.