LAX02FA144 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO) to Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport (HHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02FA144
- 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 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
- N177DP
- Operator
- Dale R. Ploung · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CATo Jack Northrop Field Hawthorne Municipal Airport (HHR), Hawthorne, 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Pole
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, oil › Loss, total
- Lubricating system, oil gasket › Failure, total
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, compliance with ad, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the airplane's engine seized and the pilot made a forced landing. During the landing flare over a baseball field, the airplane collided with poles and came to rest partially inverted. The airplane had been operated about 188 hours since last receiving an annual inspection on April 5, 2001, approximately 1 calendar year prior to the accident. Upon completion of the 2001 inspection, repair station personnel, who maintained the airplane for the pilot-owner, reported in the airplane's maintenance logbook that (emergency) airworthiness directive (AD) number 2000-18-53 was not applicable. This was an error. The repair station failed to note that the AD was pertinent to the oil filter converter plate gasket it had installed in the airplane's engine, and it should have so indicated by making an appropriate maintenance logbook entry. Compliance with the AD required, in part, that the gasket be replaced on a recurring 50-hour basis. The FAA indicated that gasket replacement was warranted because "...protruding or swelling of the gasket allows oil to leak from between the plate and the accessory housing. This condition, if not corrected, could result in complete loss of engine oil and subsequent seizing of the engine...." During the Safety Board investigator's examination of the airplane, only 8 ounces of oil were found in the 8-quart capacity oil sump, and the bottom of the airplane was oil soaked. The oil leak originated from a breach in the oil converter plate gasket. A 3/4-inch-long section of the gasket material was observed protruding from between the plate and the accessory housing. The engine's seizure was attributed to the loss of engine oil emanating from the extruded converter plate gasket, resulting in lubricating deprivation to the internal reciprocating components.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power during cruise flight resulting from oil exhaustion. The oil exhaustion resulted from deterioration and total failure of the oil filter converter plate gasket, which had not been replaced due to maintenance personnel's failure to comply with an airworthiness directive.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02FA144
- Event ID
- 20020507X00641
- Case number
- LAX02FA144
- 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: b5d730fedb2eb9fb6356c048d1d00768afbf25a732cfcc6affb1bb324388ef6b; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:44:40.785Z.