DEN04LA044 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From U42 · West Jordan, UT to U42 · West Jordan, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA044
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N66952
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U42 · West Jordan, UTTo U42 · West Jordan, UT
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Engine assembly, valve, exhaust › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the instructor, they were practicing ground maneuvers at approximately 6,000 feet msl when the engine began to "run rough." The instructor said they were unable to maintain altitude, and while returning to the airport the "engine quit." The instructor made a forced landing in a snow-covered field. During the landing, the airplane's nose landing gear caught the snow and the airplane nosed over. The airplane's nose landing gear was displaced aft, buckling the firewall. The empennage was buckled just aft of the rear window, and the vertical stabilizer was crushed. The instructor said the field was covered with over a foot of snow. An examination of the airplane's engine revealed a hole in the number 1 piston, and a fractured exhaust valve for the number 1 cylinder.
Probable cause
the failure of the exhaust valve for the engine's number one cylinder, resulting in the exhaust valve/piston contact and the subsequent total loss of engine power. Contributing factors include the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing and the snow covered field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA044
- Event ID
- 20040220X00208
- Case number
- DEN04LA044
- 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: bacabe6030391b0957104722e49bed4fda907d0bda5d96c54dc3a03a14473b69; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:58:27.116Z.