SEA04LA189 · Cessna P206A
Cessna P206A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Weiser Municipal Airport (S87) to Moose Creek US Forest Service Airport (1U1)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA189
- 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 P206A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N4661F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Weiser Municipal Airport (S87), Weiser, IDTo Moose Creek US Forest Service Airport (1U1), Moose Creek, ID
- 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
- 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 › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route, the aircraft's engine began to run rough, vibrate, and make a lot of unusual noises. Soon thereafter the oil pressure dropped to 0 psi, and the engine seized. The pilot then attempted an emergency power-off landing in an open field, but the nose gear collapsed, and the nose gear strut dug into the dirt resulting in the aircraft nosing over onto its back. A teardown inspection of the engine revealed that the number three piston pin had failed, and as a result a significant portion of the internal components of the engine had been destroyed. An examination of the Superior Air Parts piston pin revealed that it had failed along a fatigue crack that propagated across the longitudinal axis of the pin. The portion of the pin that contained the origin of the crack was not recovered, and therefore a determination of the initiating factor could not be made. ,
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fatigue crack propagation of the number three piston pin while in cruise flight, leading to a power off forced landing in an open field. Factors include soft uphill terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA189
- Event ID
- 20040920X01466
- Case number
- SEA04LA189
- 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: c307b9857ad3509592a395644c2992e57b52bfbd8e146680ca8099a24b63a119; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:43:30.025Z.