ERA09LA372 · Cessna 172D
Cessna 172D · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Blue Lick Airport (07KY) to Samuels Field (BRY)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA372
- 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 172D
- 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
- N172TJ
- Operator
- Joseph L. Tapay · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Blue Lick Airport (07KY), Louiosville, KYTo Samuels Field (BRY), Bardstown, KY
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 was in cruise flight between 1,700 and 2,200 feet mean sea level when the engine rpms decreased. He applied throttle with negative results. The airplane continued to descend and he performed a forced landing to a soybean field. Review of the airplane logbooks revealed that the airplane had flown 2.29 hours since the last annual inspection. Postaccident examination of the airframe and flight controls revealed no anomalies; however, the mixture control cable was found to be separated from the mixture control arm. The mixture cable wire tip was not bent 90 degrees to prevent it from being withdrawn if the attaching nut should become loose, as required by the maintenance manual. The cable did not exhibit any signs of damage or stretching, and it was not broken at the attach point to the attaching bolt in the mixture control arm of the carburetor. The mechanic who performed the last annual inspection stated that he did not remember if he did or did not bend the cable 90 degrees.
Probable cause
The mechanic's improper inspection of the mixture control cable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA372
- Event ID
- 20090629X10132
- Case number
- ERA09LA372
- 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: aa545896e00d5f119b6d0cc59081c9de6b09674b09f3ebd49f406e6dbb014c65; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:38:15.120Z.