CEN11LA069 · Cessna 172R
Terre Haute Air Center Cessna 172R · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Terre Haute Regional Airport, Hulman Field (HUF) to Terre Haute Regional Airport, Hulman Field (HUF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA069
- 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 172R
- 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
- N531HF
- Operator
- Terre Haute Air Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Terre Haute Regional Airport, Hulman Field (HUF), Terre Haute, INTo Terre Haute Regional Airport, Hulman Field (HUF), Terre Haute, 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 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred during a private pilot practical test. The flight test progressed normally and had included steep-turn and stall demonstrations prior to the loss of engine power. The pilot examiner reported that he initiated a simulated engine failure by reducing the throttle to idle. However, when he attempted to terminate the maneuver by applying full throttle, the engine only produced a short burst of partial power. The engine subsequently lost power completely. The flight crew's efforts to restore engine power were not successful. The examiner subsequently executed a forced landing to a soybean field. The airplane nosed over during the landing rollout and came to rest inverted. Postaccident examination and component testing did not reveal any anomalies consistent with the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA069
- Event ID
- 20101115X04138
- Case number
- CEN11LA069
- 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: d657b3ed8eead122b00f1e5b42c790fe3d4f9e76b488f01b995e37965d497abc; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:33:39.220Z.