DEN08LA103 · Cessna A188B
Rice County Aerial Sprayers Cessna A188B · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Lyons-Rice County Municipal Airport (LYO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA103
- 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
- N9639G
- Operator
- Rice County Aerial Sprayers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lyons-Rice County Municipal Airport (LYO), Lyons, KSTo 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
- Maneuvering
- Defining eventThe 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 (partial)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Several days preceding the accident, the pilot experienced engine problems during an attempted aerial application flight. After maintenance was performed, the airplane underwent several engine test runs and a couple of test flights with no problems noted. On the day of the accident, the airplane was loaded with approximately 150 gallons of chemical. After takeoff, the pilot turned the airplane in a direction opposite of his intended destination in order to over fly the airport in case of an emergency. During the initial takeoff climb, the engine was running okay and no problems were noted. Approximately 1 to 1.5 miles from the airport, the engine "pulled down," and the pilot could not maintain altitude. The pilot stated, "I am now sure the engine was trying to seize up and I was again forced to land." The pilot elected to perform a forced landing to a field. During the forced landing, the airplane impacted a dirt embankment, went onto its nose, and came to rest upright. The reason for the loss of engine power was not determined.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the dirt embankment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA103
- Event ID
- 20080624X00896
- Case number
- DEN08LA103
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: df27a02b97a3e2a02e69dacc5a7439219c704f188aedf6660438f2370f6297ee; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:47:49.982Z.