CEN10LA450 · Cessna T188C
Swing Wings Cessna T188C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From 1I7 · Clinton, IN to 1I7 · Clinton, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA450
- 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 T188C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N2085J
- Operator
- Swing Wings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1I7 · Clinton, INTo 1I7 · Clinton, IN
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while en route to spray a field, the engine lost power and the windshield became obscured with oil. The pilot immediately turned into the wind and made a forced landing into a nearby cornfield. A postaccident examination revealed that the No. 2 connecting rod had separated from the engine crankshaft. Metallurgical examinations found polishing and wear patterns indicative of relative motion between the connecting rod components and an associated rod bolt head/nut. The nut threads were sheared as result of overload failure, consistent with impulse loading. The observed anomalies were consistent with an insufficient fastener preload on installation of the connecting rod bolt. The engine had accumulated 1,193 hours since its last major overhaul. It is likely that the rod bolt head/nut became loose during operation, which led to a failure of the assembly due to impulse loading.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to an insufficient fastener preload that led to the failure of the No. 2 connecting rod assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA450
- Event ID
- 20100802X01740
- Case number
- CEN10LA450
- 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: 67b14250ff0c9a4cbc8bfff5d0f76eb01440211be42c4efedc4a34afacb1ec85; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:46:59.749Z.