DFW06CA008 · Cessna 172P
King Flight Service Cessna 172P · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA008
- 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 172P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N53795
- Operator
- King Flight Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), La Porte, TXTo not recorded
- 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
- Partial 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, cylinder › Cracked
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 200-hour private pilot was conducting a local sightseeing flight. Approximately twenty-minutes after departing, the pilot reported hearing a loud bang and the engine began to run rough and lose power. The pilot located a private airport in close range and flew directly to it under partial power. Since he was high, the pilot decided to make a circular pattern to lose altitude. When he lined up with the runway, the airplane was still too high to land and the pilot elected to use full flaps and a slip to lose altitude. The pilot realized he was going to overshoot the runway and he pulled-up and added full power. The engine continued to run rough and the airplane was still losing airspeed and altitude, so the pilot decided to make another approach from the opposite direction, approaching from about 25 degrees to the right of the runway. Full flaps and a steep approach were used to lose altitude and the airplane touched down approximately two-thirds of the way down the 2,700 foot turf runway. After touching down, the pilot applied both brakes and the airplane skidded to the right, causing the right wing to come into contact with a hangar. The airplane nosed-over and come to rest in the upright position. Examination of the engine revealed a crack at the number one cylinder.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to a cracked cylinder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA008
- Event ID
- 20051130X01919
- Case number
- DFW06CA008
- 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: 21f8d92b75002504a48a798108ba92d70a00817000d06943124f6a17bc6a8ff7; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:52:51.319Z.