CEN09LA024 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Texas Gulf Coast Regional Airport (KLBX) to West Houston Airport (KIWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA024
- 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 A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N93291
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Texas Gulf Coast Regional Airport (KLBX), Angleton, TXTo West Houston Airport (KIWS), Houston, TX
- 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
- Approach
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The engine lost power when the pilot initiated a practice missed approach procedure during a flight intended to check on some of the features of a newly installed auto pilot system on the single-engine airplane. During the forced landing, the right wing collided with trees at the approach end of the selected forced landing area. The engine was run on the airframe after the airplane was recovered to a secure location. A review of the maintenance records revealed that the engine had accumulated a total of 194.6 hours since the last major overhaul. During the engine test run, the engine ran normally for about 7 minutes, then lost fuel pressure and stopped running. A detailed examination of the airframe and engine fuel system did not reveal any discrepancies or anomalies. The engine was run again at high power settings following the examination and did not stop. The reason of the loss of engine power could not be duplicated or determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was the lack of suitable terrain for the pilot to execute the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA024
- Event ID
- 20081020X12359
- Case number
- CEN09LA024
- 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: 55a22f08c6e256927daece41281dc2fa1a7f5683ab4385b9b0b4112e6acfa4ec; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:29:06.306Z.