ATL82DA275 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Mobile Regional Airport (MOB) to 23A · AL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL82DA275
- 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 172F
- 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
- N8423U
- Operator
- Thomas H. Hopkins · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mobile Regional Airport (MOB), ALTo 23A · AL
- 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)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, poor
- Exhaust system, stack › Cracked
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT EXPERIENCED A PARTIAL LOSS OF POWER DURING A FERRY FLIGHT AND WAS FORCED TO MAKE AN EMERGENCY LANDING IN A FIELD. HE STATED THAT HE NOTED 4 VIBRATIONS FOLLOWED BY A MISSING IN THE ENGINE. THE RPM DROPPED TO 1200 AND HE COULD NOT MAINTAIN ALTITUDE. OCCASIONALLY, BY PUMPING THE THROTTLE HE WAS ABLE TO INCREASE THE RPM ABOVE 1200. EXAMINATION REVEALED A SEPARATION OF THE RIGHT EXHAUST FLAME TUBE WHICH SUBSEQUENTLY CAUSED A POWER LOSS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL82DA275
- Event ID
- 20020917X04265
- Case number
- ATL82DA275
- 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: cf6e03b79d6793c3c4b3c08cde7ed125742dacedba091866acd4f6b126561033; retrieved 2026-09-22T02:53:20.674Z.