ERA10TA197 · Cessna 182P
Montgomery County Department of Transportation Cessna 182P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to Montgomery County Airpark (GAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10TA197
- 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
- Government
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N52790
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MD
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an aerial observation flight with a gusting wind and an adequate supply of fuel on-board, the pilot reported that the engine suddenly lost power after encountering a downdraft. Attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful and the pilot maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing on wet grass near a monument. After touchdown, with excess speed to account for the gusting wind, the airplane bounced several times. During the landing roll, and with no braking action due to the wet grass, the pilot was unable to stop the airplane, which then collided with a culvert and nosed over. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical failure or malfunction. While the mixture control at the carburetor was in the idle cut-off position, impact damage to the engine mount likely pulled the control to that position. While a detailed inspection of the magnetos revealed that the primary contact point gap was considerably less than specified, the investigation was unable to determine that this caused the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons following a reported severe turbulence encounter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10TA197
- Event ID
- 20100401X54228
- Case number
- ERA10TA197
- 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: d2976eebbe6c0e6a26be23510e54586bc2e596f31787ddc258ad5e5e3aa11ae6; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:48:37.828Z.