CEN10CA549 · Cessna 182D
Cessna 182D · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From KEYQ · Houston, TX to KEYQ · Houston, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA549
- 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 182D
- 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
- N9071X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KEYQ · Houston, TXTo KEYQ · Houston, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 (partial)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departure, when the airplane was approximately 250-feet above ground level, oil began to spray onto the windshield. The pilot checked the engine gauges and noticed a drop in oil pressure. As the pilot turned onto the crosswind leg of the traffic pattern, the engine started to operate abnormally and he performed a 180-degree turn back to the runway. The airplane touched down on the last 250 feet of the runway and proceeded through a fence. The airplane sustained substantial damage during the impact with the fence and came to rest upright, among several parked buses. A postaccident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the engine’s oil cap was hanging by its chain not secured on the engine case. The cap’s gasket appeared worn; however, the inspector could not determine when the cap came off. The pilot reported that the engine was serviced with oil prior to the flight and that he thought that the oil cap was secured afterward.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during the initial climb due to decreased engine oil quantity and pressure as a result of the engine's oil cap not being adequately secured.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA549
- Event ID
- 20100921X95939
- Case number
- CEN10CA549
- 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: b3362a2550dea9b0891b9633794ace0a54bb528ccba03bd59fd7eafb9dd0ef49; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:18:58.249Z.