LAX07LA016 · Cessna 152
United Flight Services Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI) to Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA016
- 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
- N45929
- Operator
- United Flight Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI), Watsonville, CATo Salinas Municipal Airport (SNS), Salinas, CA
- 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)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
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 flight instructor, he and his student departed on the flight when, about halfway to their destination, the engine cowling and instrument panel began to shake violently. He adjusted the mixture setting and scanned the instruments and noted that the engine oil temperature and pressure were still indicating in the normal range. Shortly after that, the engine began shaking and then stopped entirely and gray smoke filled the cockpit. The flight instructor noted flames coming from the nose area of the aircraft and attempted to find a suitable landing site through the smoke and haze. The flight instructor elected to land in an agricultural field. The airplane touched down on the main landing gear, and as the nose wheel touched down it dug into the dirt and the airplane nosed over. When the instructor and student exited the airplane, they again observed a small fire near the front engine area, but it extinguished itself. According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, the engine was examined and a large hole was found on the bottom side of the engine crankcase between the number 1 and number 2 cylinders. A concentration of oil was found on the inside of the cowling at the same approximate location as the crankcase hole. FAA inspectors discovered that the number 1 connecting rod cap had separated from the connecting rod during engine operation. The reason for this occurrence is undetermined.
Probable cause
Total loss of engine power due to failure of connecting rod cap during cruise flight for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA016
- Event ID
- 20061204X01730
- Case number
- LAX07LA016
- 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: db9aa3d8edbf3bcdbee34abe7faff9b7abf9b58062b71b6fb70503bf0210a8ce; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:39:36.961Z.