MIA08LA125 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Orlando North Airpark (FA83) to Ocala International Airport - Jim Taylor Field (OCF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA125
- 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
- N757HA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando North Airpark (FA83), Zellwood, FLTo Ocala International Airport - Jim Taylor Field (OCF), Ocala, FL
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
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, 12 minutes into the flight, he noticed that the rpm began to decrease after climbing through 1,900 feet. He said that he applied carburetor heat, but the engine "froze" seconds later, and made an off field emergency landing. During the examination of the engine by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector and a Teledyne Lycoming engine representative it was revealed that the No. 3 connecting rod was detached from the crankshaft and was heat damaged. The engine was found to contain rust corrosion. Over time this leads to oil contamination and dirt particle embedment on the bearings. When bearings clearances decrease, this in affect can cause oil starvation. Review of maintenance records revealed that the engine was field overhauled on May 21, 2001. At the time of the overhaul, the engine had a total time of 3,552.6 hours. On April 18, 2008, during the annual inspection, it showed a total time of 1036.8 hours since overhaul.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 3 connecting rod cap due to oil starvation. Contributing to the accident was the contamination of the engine oil.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA125
- Event ID
- 20080714X01031
- Case number
- MIA08LA125
- 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: 058dc85266f7e7d1abc61f515b1d394296ba8a65f903532febca71ea19e7f79a; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:53:58.053Z.