CHI02LA218 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Mason County Airport (LDM) to Cherry Capital Airport (TVC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA218
- 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 TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N756CS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mason County Airport (LDM), Ludington, MITo Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), Traverse City, MI
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Engine compartment › Fire
- Exhaust system, manifold/pipe › Fatigue
- Exhaust system, manifold/pipe › Fractured
- Fuselage, cabin › Fire
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed during an on-ground fire following an emergency descent/landing due to an in-flight fire. The pilot reported that he smelled smoke followed by the cabin filling with heavy black smoke. The pilot stated flames began to enter the cockpit as he maneuvered the airplane for a landing in an agricultural field. The airplane nosed over during the landing. The left exhaust stack assembly contained a fatigue fracture adjacent to the main collector welded joint. The fracture was in both the heat affected zone and parent material. The fracture initiated in multiple locations on the outside surface of the tube and progressed through a fatigue mechanism. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) confirmed that both the weld and tube material met design specifications. The weld profile contained no apparent flaws. The left exhaust stack assembly had accumulated approximately 100 hours since new. The design of the Cessna supplied left exhaust stack assembly differs from the comparable Knisley PMA assembly. The Cessna assembly has a two-piece main collector. The two halves are stamped-out and joined together with a seam weld. The weight of the turbocharger assembly is supported in part by the left exhaust stack assembly. The Knisley main collector is manufactured by welding several tube sections together. Knisley issued a mandatory service bulletin that called for the removal of their left exhaust stack assembly and its replacement with the current Cessna assembly or FAA approved equivalent. The service bulletin states that the replacement was instituted because the Knisely assembly was not designed to carry the load of the turbocharger and compressor.
Probable cause
The in-flight engine and cabin fire caused by a fatigue fracture of the left exhaust stack assembly. An additional cause was the part's inadequate design by the aftermarket part manufacturer. A factor to the accident was the soft field in which the emergency landing was made.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA218
- Event ID
- 20020801X01286
- Case number
- CHI02LA218
- 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: 68d40d4178e07352a720487e7ddd60e891368e990258fa7ce12d5397772176eb; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:36:40.192Z.