CEN10LA245 · Gross COZY III
Gross COZY III · Accident: cabin safety event en route
From Monroe Regional Airport (MLU) to Rochester International Airport (RST)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA245
- 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
Gross COZY III
- Aircraft type
- Gross COZY
- 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
- N144TJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe Regional Airport (MLU), Monroe, LATo Rochester International Airport (RST), Rochester, MN
- 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
- Cabin safety event
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight when the right-side hinged cockpit canopy suddenly opened to about a 90-degree up position. The pilot’s headset and several other loose items in the cockpit exited the airplane. The pilot subsequently experienced a “large vibration” in the engine. With the engine producing partial power, the pilot elected to perform an emergency descent. About 4 miles from the airport, the engine experienced a total loss of power, and the pilot executed a forced landing on a busy five-lane road. After missing several vehicles, the airplane struck and damaged the rear of a car and came to rest in a ditch on the side of the road. A postaccident examination of the canopy’s primary and secondary latch system revealed that the secondary latch system exhibited an overstress fracture of the spring steel hook and had separated. The overstress fracture likely occurred during due to the canopy opening; the reason for the inadvertent opening of the canopy could not be determined. The damage to the rear mounted pusher propeller was consistent with debris from the cabin striking the propeller when the canopy opened in flight.
Probable cause
The inadvertent opening of the cockpit canopy during cruise flight for undetermined reasons, which allowed debris to impact and damage the pusher propeller with a resulting total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA245
- Event ID
- 20100510X52853
- Case number
- CEN10LA245
- 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: 0729f71050c8f229c1e8e8e8005b0045bad348405c5e097a7d3512af79670f39; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:03:36.627Z.