LAX08LA221 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) to Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA221
- 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 172RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9627B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, CATo Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While performing air work during the instructional flight, the student attempted to increase engine power above idle, but upon pushing the throttle control knob forward, the engine's power did not increase. The certified flight instructor (CFI) verified that there was no change in engine power with movement of the throttle control, and he believed that the control had likely become disconnected from the carburetor. The CFI performed a forced landing on the nearby rough terrain. During landing, the airplane impacted a berm and nosed over. An examination of the airplane revealed the throttle control cable was in fact disconnected from its respective carburetor attachment fitting and undamaged. Also, the threaded portion of the cable's attachment end was found without damage. The jam nuts, which normally secure the throttle cable to the carburetor attachment fitting, were found tight against each other, but backed off from their designated location, and were not positioned close enough to the rod end to secure the cable to the carburetor throttle arm. The operator's mechanics were responsible for, and had performed, recent maintenance and inspections of the flight school's airplane. The accident airplane's last 100-hour inspection had been performed on July 3, 2008, 6 days prior to the accident. The security and condition of the engine control connections to the carburetor are part of this inspection.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to the disconnection of the throttle control cable from the throttle arm due to the operator's improper maintenance. Contributing to the accident was unsuitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA221
- Event ID
- 20080715X01045
- Case number
- LAX08LA221
- 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: f21f355890fa7b492cbb5be2a318b197b670dd90ca5dba1f9cbfdd26f0a8fcbc; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:54:34.744Z.