SEA05LA057 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Auburn Municipal Airport (S50) to Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA057
- 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
- N65579
- Operator
- John W. Gilman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Municipal Airport (S50), Auburn, WATo Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM), Yakima, WA
- 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)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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, connecting rod › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had just dropped off a passenger and was returning to his home base. The pilot stated that after departure and climbing through 5,000 feet, he heard a noise. He continued to climb to altitude, and the noise appeared to have stopped, but he noticed that the oil temperature was increasing. The pilot enrichened the mixture and the oil pressure suddenly dropped. The pilot turned back to his departure airport, and when about eight miles from the airport, he heard a "knocking" noise, then the engine lost power. The pilot could not locate the airport, so he opted to make an off airport landing to a road. During the maneuver for landing, the right wing collided with trees, substantially damaging the outboard about five feet of wing structure. During the post-accident inspection of the engine it was found that engine oil was present on the belly of the fuselage from the nose to the tail. Approximately 20 gallons of fuel was present in the wing fuel tanks. The forward crankshaft seal was only partially seated in the nose of the engine case. The lower numbers 1 and 4 spark plugs were removed and showed signs of lead fouling. The numbers 3 and 4 primer lines were found loose at the cylinder. The numbers 1 and 3 connecting rods failed and the numbers 2 and 4 connecting rod bearing material was melted and squeezed between the rod cap and the crankshaft. The engine case halves displayed several holes. The number 2 cylinder cracked the case around the cylinder base and was attached to the engine by two studs.
Probable cause
The failure of connecting rods during cruise flight resulting in a loss of engine power. Trees were a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA057
- Event ID
- 20050308X00281
- Case number
- SEA05LA057
- 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 2005-03-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 202130d3c6faacc35ec9005b4ac08ee5183759caeb3b19a4097ee8376f27b931; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:13:30.937Z.