ERA13LA262 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Silver Comet Field at Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport (PUJ) to Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA262
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N6525M
- Operator
- Richard Secord
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Silver Comet Field at Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport (PUJ), Atlanta, GATo Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA), Roanoke, VA
- 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 (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
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was in cruise flight at 9,500 feet mean sea level when he heard a loud noise and then popping sounds coming from the engine. He then smelled smoke and saw oil trailing from the engine compartment down the outside of the airplane. As the pilot maneuvered for a forced landing at a nearby airport, the engine produced intermittent power and then lost power completely. The pilot maneuvered the airplane for landing, but the runway was obstructed by cars and farm equipment, so he landed the airplane long. After touchdown, the pilot maneuvered the airplane into a small knoll between the airport and an elementary school where it struck a berm and came to rest.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve was stuck and that its associated pushrod was bent, worn through, and fractured as a result of compression loading near its midpoint due to the stuck exhaust valve. Examination of the cylinder and its associated parts revealed that the exhaust valve guides were misaligned during manufacture, which subsequently resulted in the valve guide wearing unevenly, the valve sticking, the pushrod breaking, and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The cylinder manufacturer's misalignment of the exhaust valve guides in the No. 2 cylinder during manufacture, which resulted in the exhaust valve sticking and the pushrod breaking and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA262
- Event ID
- 20130531X10043
- Case number
- ERA13LA262
- 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: c4edb671ec531972797e3d5c96d50eabc2cd8a949e0f0c94b428b97d740ea4bc; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:43:45.853Z.