MIA08LA196 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Macon Downtown Airport (MAC) to Jekyll Island Airport (09J)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA196
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N77068
- Operator
- Virgil P. Warren,III · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Macon Downtown Airport (MAC), Macon, GATo Jekyll Island Airport (09J), Jekyll Island, GA
- 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
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that they were about 1 hour and 20 minutes into their planned 2-hour cross country flight, when an opaque film began to accumulate on the airplane’s windshield. Engine oil was observed leaking from the forward right engine cowling area. Within a minute, forward visibility was severely restricted and the pilot had to rely on the instruments for level flight while referring out the side window for visual reference. There were no abnormal indications from the engine instrumentations. The nearest airport was too far away so the pilot elected to land in a clear field within gliding distance. The pilot approached the open field in a slip; the windshield was covered with oil. He lost visual reference as he recovered from the slip to land, and had to estimate the flare for the touchdown. The airplane landed hard and bounced, which separated the right wheel assembly from the gear. The airplane’s right gear dug in on the second contact with the ground, resulting in the airplane coming to an abrupt stop in a nose-low and tail-high position. A wreckage examination revealed the engine oil was leaking from the front section of the engine crankcase, behind the propeller flange. The forward crankshaft expansion plug was observed dislodged from it seating, allowing pressurized oil to escape from the forward end of the crankshaft. The airplane’s engine had been overhauled 39 flight hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
An oil starvation-induced catastrophic engine failure due to the improper installation of the crankshaft expansion plug during engine overhaul.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA196
- Event ID
- 20081007X11157
- Case number
- MIA08LA196
- 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. 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: 42d1081ea5b1338edc762111ed91d25b8ff496f5ebdf9d5f92d10ed427bdf4fc; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:25:09.202Z.