CEN09IA456 · Cessna 172R
American Flyers Cessna 172R · Incident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From Dupage Airport (DPA) to Dupage Airport (DPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09IA456
- 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
- Incident
- 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 172R
- 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
- N77AF
- Operator
- American Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, ILTo Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, IL
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A previous maintenance entry in the airplane logbook indicated that the firewall was replaced and the airplane returned to service. The airplane had been operated for about 63 hours when the throttle control cable became unscrewed from the rod end of the throttle assembly during an instructional flight. The flight instructor and student pilot lost throttle control during an approach to a destination airport when engine speed increased to about 2,200-2,300 rpm. The flight instructor landed the airplane without further incident. The throttle control assemblies for the airplane do not have a key way at the throttle control knob to prevent rotation of the cable and unscrewing of the cable from the rod end should the jamnut become loose. The operator recommended that a safety device and not just a jamnut be installed to prevent the throttle control from disconnecting from the rod end.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to the detachment of the throttle control cable from the throttle assembly during a landing approach. Contributing to the accident was the lack of a redundant means to preclude the detachment of the cable from the throttle assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09IA456
- Event ID
- 20090722X62123
- Case number
- CEN09IA456
- 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, damage. 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: b17a8357bc50e929c4502a5a4eb208afb735109a476abf450704cf39c7fa23a9; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:58:20.459Z.