ERA11LA230 · Cessna 172P
Isla Grande Flying School Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Rafael Hernández International Airport (BQN) to Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (SIG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA230
- 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 172P
- 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
- N98FR
- Operator
- Isla Grande Flying School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rafael Hernández International Airport (BQN), Borinquen, PRTo Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (SIG), San Juan, PR
- 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 · cruise
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, about 1,000 feet above ground level, the engine lost power and began to vibrate. The pilot was unable to maintain altitude, so he performed a forced landing to a nearby abandoned military airfield. After touchdown, the airplane departed the end of the runway and collided with trees and bushes resulting in substantial damage to the airframe. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve failed, and the valve parts exited the engine through the exhaust system. The operator reported that the exhaust valve had accumulated about 1,120 hours since installation.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve resulting in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA230
- Event ID
- 20110407X02204
- Case number
- ERA11LA230
- 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: 77da6c10e87fb2fcd53309870fe3d16db0fd6454dcefca5d422a6484d56dde76; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:01:11.880Z.