ATL07LA012 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From New Bern, NC (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07LA012
- 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 A188B
- 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
- N9176R
- Operator
- William James Brinkley
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Bern, NC (private airstrip)To 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 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during the takeoff climb at about 100 to 150 feet above ground level the engine shut down. He rolled the airplane level, pushed the nose over, and attempted a landing in a turf field. The airplane struck the ground substantially damaging the airplane. The pilot egressed the airplane with assistance from witnesses. Examination of the airplane by an FAA Inspector found the landing gear, spray equipment, and the right wing separated from the airframe. Fuel was observed in both fuel tanks. Examination of the engine found the propeller separated from the engine crankshaft and the engine was seized due to impact damage. The engine was rotated 90-degrees within the engine mounts. Both magnetos and the fuel manifold were observed impact damaged. Oil was observed on the oil dipstick when it was removed. According to witnesses on the ground the engine was not running smoothly from the time of taxi through the takeoff and subsequent engine shut-down. The FAA Inspector further stated that the aircraft operator did not hold an FAA 14 CFR Part 137 Aerial Application Certificate at the time of the accident, as required by FAA regulation.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the pilot's continued operation of the airplane with known deficiencies with the engine, which resulted in a forced landing and in-flight collision with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07LA012
- Event ID
- 20061027X01564
- Case number
- ATL07LA012
- 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: e1ef1ba8ea3dde14f62e845e15eb3720352c5c30332bfffd7788a9a9769bf290; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:39:43.345Z.