MN Aviation Cessna 208B incident
Cessna 208B · Incident: loss of engine power en route
From Antonio Rivera Rodriguez Airport (VQS) to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (TJSJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05FA074
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N1241X
- Operator
- MN Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antonio Rivera Rodriguez Airport (VQS), Vieques, PRTo Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (TJSJ), San Juan, PR
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Compressor assembly, blade › Fractured
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 total loss of engine power during a domestic passenger cross-country flight. Following the loss of power, the pilot successfully landed the airplane at a nearby Naval Air Station. The pilot reported that during cruise flight, he heard a loud bang and oil became visible on the aircraft's windshield. He stated that concurrent with the loud bang, the propeller came to an abrupt stop. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed extensive corrosion and mechanical damage throughout the compressor and power turbine assemblies. The compressor disk assembly was essentially intact, however, all of the compressor turbine blades were fractured and displaced. The fracture surfaces were all approximately .250 inches above the corresponding blade platform. Examination of the fractured compressor turbine blades revealed the blades fractured in a tensile overload condition. The overload fractures associated with the compressor turbine blades was due to a weakening of the underlying base material due to the presence of sulphidation corrosion. The sulphidation corrosion was evident through approximately half of the thickness of the blades airfoil reducing the blades effective load bearing capabilities. The material composition of the turbine blades met drawing requirements and no metallurgical anomalies were found.
Probable cause
The fracture of multiple compressor turbine blades while the airplane was in a cruise flight configuration resulting in a loss of engine power. Sulphidation type corrosion was a factor in failure of the blades.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05FA074
- Event ID
- 20050415X00462
- Case number
- SEA05FA074
- 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, damage. 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: 79887af6e944c05f4ce1f256480ec9ed4ee714936f5bb9f27536ad557406fed9; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:03:34.764Z.