CEN11CA062 · Cessna 172 P
Civil Air Patrol Cessna 172 P · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Pineville Municipal Airport (2L0) to Pineville Municipal Airport (2L0)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11CA062
- 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 172 P
- 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
- N9747L
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pineville Municipal Airport (2L0), Pineville, LATo Pineville Municipal Airport (2L0), Pineville, LA
- 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 › Aircraft handling/service
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following the installation of an overhauled engine and the completion of an annual inspection, the pilot/mechanic that had performed the work elected to fly the airplane. During takeoff the engine indications were normal and the airplane climbed to about 500 feet above ground level when the engine experienced a sudden power loss and the rpms decreased. The pilot then maneuvered the airplane in a 180-degree turn back toward the airport. He overshot the runway and the airplane sustained substantial damage during an off-airport forced landing. Federal Aviation Administration inspectors who responded to the scene discovered that the throttle control linkage was not connected to the carburetor throttle plate arm; the associated bolt, castellated nut, and cotter pin were missing. The pilot/mechanic stated that he had connected the throttle control linkage but could not remember if he had installed the cotter pin.
Probable cause
The pilot/mechanic’s improper inspection of the airplane following the engine installation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11CA062
- Event ID
- 20101109X12401
- Case number
- CEN11CA062
- 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: c51070a2f045d6c4545a2025f6524991c9a3f4080d43759bfd9564b80b410904; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:33:07.677Z.