ERA12LA428 · Cessna R172K
Cessna R172K · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Becks Grove Airport (K16) to Binghampton, NY
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA428
- 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 R172K
- 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
- N758JQ
- Operator
- Pecha James C
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Becks Grove Airport (K16), Rome, NYTo Binghampton, NY
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that about 25 minutes into the flight while the airplane was at an altitude of about 2,300 feet mean sea level, the engine began to run rough, followed by partial loss of power. He turned and proceeded toward an airport then he started hearing metallic grinding sounds as the engine power continued to decrease. Unable to maintain altitude, he elected to land downwind on a runway; he noted that his airspeed was about 100 knots at the threshold. The main landing gear contacted the surface about midpoint of the runway, and the pilot pushed the control yoke to force the nose landing gear onto the runway in an intentional effort to stop the airplane before running off a steep embankment. The airplane came to rest upright about three-quarters of the way down the length of the runway, with structural damage to the engine firewall.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed the head of the No. 3 cylinder had separated from the barrel due to an undetected fatigue crack that emanated from corrosion pits on the outer surface of the barrel. Paint covering crater-shaped corrosion blisters on the barrel indicates that the paint was applied to a surface that had already corroded and suggests that the corrosion developed over an extended period of time. Although the engine had only accrued about 9 hours since the last 100-hour inspection, the location of the piston at top dead center during the compression test would have been above the location of the fracture and the loss of compression likely would not have been detected.
The engine manufacturer recommended that the engine be overhauled every 1500 hours or every 12 years. Although components of the cylinders were replaced in 1986, there was no record that the No. 3 cylinder had been replaced since the airplane was manufactured in 1979. Notably, the engine had accumulated about 1356 hours since installation and had not reached the manufacturer's recommended hour limit for overhaul. However, the 12-year time limit had been significantly exceeded and an overhaul would have involved either installing new or overhauled cylinders. Operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91, the owner was not required to adhere to the manufacturer's overhaul recommendations. However, following both the manufacturer's recommended time and hour limitations would have likely addressed the fatigue cracking prior to the accident.
Probable cause
An undetected fatigue crack on the outer surface of the No. 3 cylinder barrel that could only have been detected visually and not by a differential compression test , resulting in separation of the head from the barrel and a subsequent partial loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to land downwind on a runway that subsequently necessitated an intentional hard landing to avoid a runway overrun and his failure to follow the engine manufacturer's time between overhaul recommendation .
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA428
- Event ID
- 20120703X63653
- Case number
- ERA12LA428
- 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: 37c5ddeb73266ea644ead48d4e690b4fd18d8227ff329209aa88bafc27c01126; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:43:39.638Z.