LAX04LA170 · Cessna 188B
T-Craft Cessna 188B · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From Chowchilla Airport (K2O6) to Chowchilla Airport (K2O6)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA170
- 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 188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N478Q
- Operator
- T-Craft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chowchilla Airport (K2O6), Chowchilla, CATo Chowchilla Airport (K2O6)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · aerial application
- 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
- Fuel system, line fitting › Not secured
- Fuel system, line › Separation
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 experienced a partial loss of engine power and impacted flat terrain while maneuvering over farm fields. The pilot was applying fertilizer to an agriculture field. He was in a climbing turn, about 150 feet above ground level (agl), when he felt the airplane shake as if it was approaching a stall. He advanced the throttle. The engine did not sound normal, and the airplane was not able to maintain altitude. He was over an orchard and directed the airplane towards one of the fields he was working. The pilot said he was over that field, fighting the stall buffet, when the airplane gave up flying, spun over to the right inverted, and nosed down to the ground 50 feet below. The pilot exited, and the airplane was subjected to a post impact fire. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector performed a post accident examination of the airplane's engine at the operator's facility. He reported that the engine was a Continental IO-520-D that had folded under the wreckage against the ground, which provided protection from the post accident fire. Extensive heat damage was identified around cylinder number 5, which included local melting of the aluminum around the rocker cover and intake manifold. The number 5 cylinder fuel injector line was free of the fuel injector nozzle. The number 5 cylinder injector fuel line b-nut was found to be only finger tight. Examination of the airplane's maintenance logbook revealed that the engine oil cooler had been removed and replaced on March 12, 2004, approximately 36 flight hours prior to the accident. The FAA inspector said that a common practice used by mechanics was to move or adjust the number 5 cylinder fuel injector line in order to install or uninstall the engine oil cooler.
Probable cause
the partial loss of engine power due to the separation of the number 5 cylinder fuel injector supply line. The fuel line separation was due to company maintenance personnel's failure to secure the b-nut fitting following maintenance. Factors in the accident were the unsuitable nature of the terrain where the engine problem developed and the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while attempting to reach a suitable forced landing spot, which led to an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA170
- Event ID
- 20040331X00405
- Case number
- LAX04LA170
- 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: befd059dce8978468bf827fceaba4422c85acbe6ba487f024720f4f66985c8a6; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:49:25.737Z.