WPR09LA196 · Cessna 152
Air Safety Flight Academy Cessna 152 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU) to Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA196
- 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
- N6285M
- Operator
- Air Safety Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZTo Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZ
- 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
- 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 flight instructor and student were returning to the airport when the airplane's engine began running rough. The roughness became increasingly worse, and finally the engine "sputtered briefly" and lost power. The flight instructor was unable to restart the engine, and he initiated a forced landing onto a nearby grassy field. During the landing roll, the airplane impacted a chain link fence, resulting in structural damage to the right wing. During postaccident examination of the airplane, several attempts were made to start and run the engine; however, it would not start. The magnetos were removed from the engine and tested, and neither produced spark. Disassembly of the left magneto revealed the failure of the secondary coil. Disassembly of the right magneto revealed that the point gap was set incorrectly and that the lead connector from the magneto's coil to the points was loose. Review of maintenance records revealed that the magnetos were removed 3 tachometer hours prior to the accident; new points, capacitors, and gaskets were installed and the magnetos were reinstalled on the engine.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the failure of both magnetos resulting from an improper maintenance repair by maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA196
- Event ID
- 20090416X73114
- Case number
- WPR09LA196
- 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: a4005303f09df601b7cec6a1b87274d8b03fa598bcdb3ceefc66fe33dfb4b265; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:56:44.793Z.