FTW04LA065 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Stuttgart Municipal Airport / Carl Humphrey Field (SGT) to 1M1 · North Little Rock, AR
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA065
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N1961V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stuttgart Municipal Airport / Carl Humphrey Field (SGT), Stuttgart, ARTo 1M1 · North Little Rock, AR
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 380-hour pilot reported that during cruise flight he heard "the engine make two loud knocking sounds and it started to vibrate and loose power." The pilot initiated a forced landing to an unlit airfield east of his position. During the landing roll, he realized he "wouldn't be able to stop the airplane before running into trees located at the end of the runway." The pilot turned the airplane left, exiting the runway. Subsequently, the airplane impacted a ditch, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. During an on-scene examination of the airplane, the engine was started and it ran for approximately 15 seconds before it was turned off with the magneto switch. When the propeller was manually rotated by hand, valve train continuity was established throughout, and all four cylinders produced compression. No mechanical deficiencies were noted, and the reason for the loss of engine power was undetermined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the dusk lighting conditions and unlit airfield.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA065
- Event ID
- 20040127X00112
- Case number
- FTW04LA065
- 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 2004-01-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 93f7ca0ee98f24b89d539081112a146bb434a9f05c90a46fcb6107b7dac52e88; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:00:15.768Z.