NYC03FA131 · Cessna 205
Cessna 205 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Greensburg Jeannette Regional Airport (5G8) to Greensburg Jeannette Regional Airport (5G8)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03FA131
- 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
- 4 · 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 205
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 205
- 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
- N124A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greensburg Jeannette Regional Airport (5G8), Jeannette, PATo Greensburg Jeannette Regional Airport (5G8)
- 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
- Partial 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
- Stall; Tree(s)
- 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, air filter/screen › Ingested
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane depart to the north, and experience a partial loss of power during the takeoff climb. The airplane then began a turn to the left, and initiated what appeared to be a right base entry for a landing on runway 20. The airplane continued the turn, past 270 degrees, and as it flew beyond the end of the runway, the engine appeared to regain power and the airplane began a climb. The airplane then banked sharply and impacted trees. Examination of the engine cylinders revealed heavy black combustion deposits, on the number 3 and number 6 cylinder chambers, exhibiting signatures of operation with a foreign material. Additionally, two pieces of aluminum material were found in the combustion chamber of the number 6 cylinder. The aluminum pieces were identified to be the same material as the air filter mount frame from the airframe induction system. The number 5 top compression ring was also broken and severely worn. According to the Continental Report, "The ingestion of foreign material in cylinder combustion chambers can affect proper valve operation/timing and produce a combustion miss, thereby diminishing the engine power output."
Probable cause
The loss of power caused by fragments of the air filter being ingested in the engine. A factor was the pilot's delayed decision to perform a forced landing after experiencing a partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03FA131
- Event ID
- 20030701X00981
- Case number
- NYC03FA131
- 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: f34932cad64ac25708440db2cf859040e3f684de3ccd5de5e219ea76cab713a5; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:09:35.492Z.