ERA09CA171 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Tom B. David Field (CZL) to Air Acres Airport (5GA4)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA171
- 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
- N57N
- Operator
- Kobs Edward J
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tom B. David Field (CZL), Dalton, GATo Air Acres Airport (5GA4), Woodstock, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
While on the base leg of the traffic pattern, the pilot states that he applied carburetor heat and reduced the engine power to idle. He reported that when he turned onto the final leg, the airplane was lower than he wanted it be and that he advanced the throttle control, but the engine did not respond. The airplane subsequently struck trees prior to the runway and then impacted the ground. Both wings and the fuselage were substantially damaged. The National Transportation Safety Board was notified of the accident by the pilot about 1 month after the accident. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector was conducted about 6 weeks after the accident and did not reveal evidence of any preaccident malfunctions. A weather report from an airport located about 9 miles northeast of the accident site about the time of the accident indicated a temperature of 9 degrees Celsius (C) and a dew point of -7 degrees C.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power, as reported by the pilot, for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA171
- Event ID
- 20090224X12910
- Case number
- ERA09CA171
- 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: eceae05872e083f6de98891ea4d39a4c2c42b1dc9812d1a6fbf6c69453aee659; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:46:43.932Z.