ERA12LA539 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From 39N · Princeton, PA to Cherry Ridge Airport (N30)
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
- ERA12LA539
- 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 172M
- 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
- N391R
- Operator
- Kurtz Andrew D
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From 39N · Princeton, PATo Cherry Ridge Airport (N30), Honesdale, PA
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a preflight inspection of the airplane and an engine run-up with no discrepancies reported before departing. He departed with an adequate supply of fuel and proceeded toward his destination airport. During cruise flight, with the fuel-to-air ratio leaned, the pilot heard an engine sound that he said was similar to a cylinder not firing; the engine then experienced significant vibration and a partial loss of power. Attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful. The flight was vectored by an air traffic controller to the Cherry Ridge Airport (N30), and on the first approach to the 2,405-foot-long grass downsloping runway designated 20, the flight was high and fast resulting in a bounced landing necessitating a go-around. He executed a 180 degree turn to land on runway 2, and while on final approach, the airplane was allowed to descend below the elevation of the runway resulting in undershoot followed by a nose-over. While the postaccident inspection of the engine revealed a discrepancy with one magneto and very low compression from the No. 4 cylinder, the pilot stated that his in-flight check of each magneto revealed satisfactory results.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to attain a proper glidepath.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA539
- Event ID
- 20120901X00238
- Case number
- ERA12LA539
- 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, coordinates. 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: 88012eeb687662de7aaed9a55b727d72480b542d30f675fcd6d5ba7a93f5dd64; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:37:08.924Z.