CHI07FA016 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Huron County Memorial Airport (BAX) to Chicago, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07FA016
- 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
- 1 · 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N9408B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Huron County Memorial Airport (BAX), Bad Axe, MITo Chicago, IL
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Lubricating system, oil seal › Leak
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Air traffic controllers received an emergency radio call from a person representing the airplane. The pilot responded that oil was on the airplane's windshield and that oil pressure was zero. The airplane was given a heading to divert to the closest airport. The pilot was asked if he could maintain altitude and he responded "no." The pilot advised that he was going to land in a field. Air traffic controllers alerted crash, fire, and rescue personnel of the airplane's location. The airplane was found near the top of a crest in rolling pastureland about eight miles northeast of the diversion airport. The empennage was streaked with a liquid consistent with oil. The windshield was broken and pieces of it were coated with a liquid consistent with oil. An on-scene examination of the wreckage revealed no airframe pre-impact anomalies. The top right side of the engine, aft facing forward, was coated with a liquid consistent with oil. The engine case and cylinders showed no pre-impact anomalies that would have precluded engine operation. The top of the separated reduction gear case was coated with a liquid consistent with oil. Disassembly showed that the upper right section of the nose seal assembly, which sealed against the reduction gear case, exhibited an area coated with a liquid consistent with oil. The remainder of the seal was intact and was not coated with liquid. The airplane did not have shoulder harnesses installed and was not required to have them installed. Advisory Circular 91-65, Use of Shoulder Harness in Passenger Seats, in part, stated, "The [National Transportation Safety Board] concluded that shoulder harness use is the most effective way of reducing fatalities and serious injuries in general aviation accidents."
Probable cause
A loss of engine power while in cruise flight due to an oil leak from the nose seal of the reduction gear case. Contributing to the accident were the oil leak, the pilot's reduced visibility out the windscreen, and rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07FA016
- Event ID
- 20061107X01620
- Case number
- CHI07FA016
- 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: 6167b95bc9c051fcffc5f668c8f407d7a4485f067ede4cf2289a5e46b0628fe9; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:00:26.118Z.