Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10WA444
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · 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 172
- 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
- HC-AQK
- Operator
- Aifa
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On August 25, 2010, about 1229 universal coordinated time, a Cessna 172, Ecuadorian registration HC-AQK, registered to and operated by AIFA as a personal flight, crashed following a loss of engine power. The airplane was substantially damaged. The pilot and rear seated passenger were seriously injured, and the right seated passenger was fatally injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.
According to information obtained from the Ecuadorian Accidentes de Aviacion Civil, the flight departed under visual flight rules. Shortly thereafter, the pilot reported that he had an unspecified engine problem. The pilot contacted air traffic control and reported his position before going down. In an interview by rescuers, the pilot stated that the engine rpm dropped from 2,300 to 2,000 rpm, and the airplane descended into the trees.
This investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Ecuador. Any further information can be obtained from:
Sr. Jaime Salazar G La investigación se encuentra a cargo de la Junta Investigadora de Accidentes de la República del Ecuador
Phone: 593-2-223-8981 Fax; 593-2- 249-3755
This report is for informational purposes only and contains information released by the Government of Ecuador.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10WA444
- Event ID
- 20100826X52309
- Case number
- ERA10WA444
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cc7ad096648ed4cdf683d8c2cc17747f81bda21f78952729501341873573bba7; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:01:26.151Z.