CHI04LA001 · Cessna 182A
Cessna 182A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Coles County Memorial Airport (MTO) to Lincoln Airport (LNK)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA001
- 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 182A
- 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
- N3772D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Coles County Memorial Airport (MTO), Mattoon, ILTo Lincoln Airport (LNK), Lincoln, NE
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
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 sustained substantial damage when it impacted a ditch during an emergency landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported that the engine "popped" twice and the airplane lost engine power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine but was unsuccessful. The pilot-rated passenger prepared for an emergency landing at the destination airport. They realized the airplane would land short of the airport and prepared to "ditch." The airplane touched down in a cornfield and subsequently impacted a ditch. An FAA inspector examined the airplane subsequent to the accident and found five gallons of fuel in the left tank. The fuel tank strainer and fittings were pulled from the right wing. The strainer was destroyed, but had no signs of blockage previous to the accident. No fuel was observed in the right tank or in the fuel inlet line of the carburetor. The airframe and engine were examined and no anomalies were found.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power for an undetermined reason during cruise and the unsuitable terrain for landing encountered by the pilot. The factors to the accident were the dark night, the corn crop, and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA001
- Event ID
- 20031007X01672
- Case number
- CHI04LA001
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-10-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b8b751de88503426e5ed4a7542eb64fb9c45b93a8b1b79c812990a5b7dcd5307; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:22:20.282Z.