CEN10LA498 · Freeman SUPER KOALA
Freeman SUPER KOALA · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Cherry Capital Airport (TVC) to Cherry Capital Airport (TVC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA498
- 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
Freeman SUPER KOALA
- Aircraft type
- Freeman SUPER KOALA
- 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
- N220FF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), Traverse City, MITo Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), Traverse City, MI
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported a loss of engine power during cruise flight. He elected to land in the only open space available, which was comprised of rising terrain. During the approach to the field, the left wing dropped and the airplane turned to the left before impact. A postaccident examination of the number one cylinder exhaust port revealed an accumulation of carbon. The number one cylinder’s spark plug could be loosened by hand in indication that it was not properly secured prior to impact; removal of that plug revealed that it exhibited a fouled appearance. The engine's maintenance manual indicated that the spark plugs are to be tightened on a cold engine to 240-inch pounds of torque. The airplane’s airworthiness was maintained by the owner/pilot under a conditional maintenance program.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the improper torquing of the number one cylinder's spark plug as a result of inadequate maintenance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA498
- Event ID
- 20100825X63740
- Case number
- CEN10LA498
- 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: 2d9a0007645068a54e98163e15155ce56cc5be2cf5932e00c390763392baf7b5; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:57:34.029Z.