CHI07LA039 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Rolla National Airport (VIH) to Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA039
- 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 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N76379
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rolla National Airport (VIH), Rolla/Vichy, MOTo Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KS
- 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
- Engine assembly, other › Fatigue
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, major, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, overhaul, major, not performed
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 impacted terrain during a forced landing after a loss of engine power. The pilot recently purchased the airplane and had taken delivery of it on the day of the accident. Examination of the engine revealed three of the crankshaft cluster gear bolts were fractured completely through. The bolt fracture surface features were consistent with fatigue. Additionally, the crankshaft gear had a hole where a crankshaft dowel had been installed following a design change in 1948 and was reflected in subsequent maintenance manuals. The dowel is used as a reference in machining the crankshaft. During the disassembly, the tappets fell out when the engine was overturned during the disassembly. It was later noted that the tappets did not contain retaining hardware. The interior of the crankcase halves contained a black colored residue when the oil was drained. Logbook entries show that the engine was last overhauled on July 25, 1990, and accumulated a total time since overhaul of 257.5 hours. Teledyne Continental Service Information Letter, SIL98-9A, Time Between Overhaul Periods, states that engines are to be overhauled at least every twelve years.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight due to fatigued crankshaft cluster gear bolts and the inadequate major overhaul of the engine that was last performed by other maintenance personnel. An additional cause was a subsequent major engine overhaul not performed by the pilot after he purchased the airplane and operated it with an engine that exceeded the engine manufacturer's time between overhaul criteria.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA039
- Event ID
- 20061222X01841
- Case number
- CHI07LA039
- 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: 81a08ee7200f4ab6fa585b1b60bb5102adc53f2aae376ad7dadc69ff6b96eb16; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:09:52.805Z.