SEA03FA026 · Cessna 172K
Cessna 172K · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW) to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03FA026
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172K
- 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
- N1909V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW), Tacoma, WATo Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WA
- 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 · climb to 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the climb after takeoff, the aircraft's engine started surging and making loud noises. This was followed by a steady decrease in the power the engine would produce, and an increase in the loud noises emanating from the engine compartment. Being unable to maintain his assigned attitude, the pilot descended in instrument meteorological conditions until he broke out of the clouds about 800 to 1000 feet above the ground. Knowing that he could not make it to the airport, the pilot attempted a power-out forced landing on a nearby road, but when he was about 20 feet above the road's surface a car pulled out onto the roadway. During the landing sequence, the aircraft impacted the rear of the car. It was ultimately determined that the loss of power was due to the fracture of the number seven crankshaft cheek as the result of the propagation of a fatigue crack initiation point. Materials laboratory examination of the crankshaft did not discover any clear reason for the creation of the initiation point.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power in the climb due to the fracture of the number seven engine crankshaft cheek due to the propagation of a fatigue crack initiation point. Factors include a vehicle pulling onto the road that the pilot selected for his forced emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03FA026
- Event ID
- 20030115X00068
- Case number
- SEA03FA026
- 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: 5f9a6f428541c14d4138aa4faacebfa1b119ed207f39c558d8b1784901916080; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:40:34.265Z.