IAD02LA056 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Trenton Mercer Airport (TTN) to Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02LA056
- 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 177RG
- 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
- N8200G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Trenton Mercer Airport (TTN), Trenton, NJTo Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N), Ocean City, NJ
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Induction air control, alternate air/door › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the airplane experienced a loss of power and the pilot attempted to land on the remaining runway. The airplane touched down at the end of the runway and came to rest in a field. Examination of the engine revealed that the plastic alternate air door had separated from the front of the induction airbox and was located in the bottom of the air intake. A service letter was issued by the airplane manufacturer in 1971 which specified that the alternate air door be moved to the rear of the induction airbox. The parts manual specified that the rear-mounted alternate air door be made out of metal. The pilot reported that he had owned the airplane for 3 years.
Probable cause
The separation of the engine induction alternate air door, which resulted in a loss of engine power. A factor was the non-compliance with the manufacturer's service letter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02LA056
- Event ID
- 20020617X00897
- Case number
- IAD02LA056
- 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: 5f6f80515d4b76d36aad167b0f01cd07ae90261278708954c368dae10cc8cca0; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:53:24.466Z.