WPR13LA224 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Lampson Field (1O2) to Lampson Field (1O2)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA224
- 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
- N20800
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lampson Field (1O2), Lakeport, CATo Lampson Field (1O2), Lakeport, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1975)
- 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 · climb to 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb following takeoff, the engine began to make a rumbling sound. The pilot began a series of troubleshooting steps, and a short time later, the engine lost all power. The pilot performed a forced landing into a vineyard, where the airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the horizontal stabilizer.
Examination of the engine revealed catastrophic internal failure focused primarily in the area of the No. 2 piston. Following the failure, excessive heat developed within the engine, which caused the crankshaft to expand and impinge on the oil pump, which in turn failed. The damage sustained to the piston, connecting rod bearing, and connecting rod bolts, prevented an accurate assessment of the failure mode.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power during climb due to a failure of the No. 2 piston assembly; the reason for the failure could not be determined because of the extent of damage to the piston assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA224
- Event ID
- 20130510X10838
- Case number
- WPR13LA224
- 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: 007a84fa9f7c6f6c8e0594fd3f7875cb80d2b36edaba531ca7fccd6d6d6bfab3; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:29:56.239Z.