CEN13LA562 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Trans Med Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS) to Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA562
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N426TF
- Operator
- Trans Med
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS), Alamosa, COTo Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2009)
- 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
- 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 reported that, while the airplane was in cruise flight, the engine suddenly lost power and then seized. During the subsequent forced landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage. Examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft was fractured through the cheek extending from the No. 2 main bearing journal to the No. 3 connecting rod journal. The No. 2 main bearings had extruded from their crankcase positions and exhibited mechanical damage. The No. 2 main bearing support displayed signatures consistent with bearing shift. The No. 2 main bearing saddle support and several other bearing saddle supports exhibited fretting, consistent with movement between the engine case halves due to insufficient torque on the case through bolts. Maintenance logbook records showed that the Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 cylinders were replaced about 1 1/2 years before the accident. When maintenance personnel replaced those cylinders, they would have had to remove the nuts on the case through bolts because they also serve as hold-down bolts for the cylinders. Based on the evidence, it is likely that maintenance personnel applied insufficient torque on the case through bolts after replacing the cylinders, which led to case movement and ultimately to the No. 2 main bearings shifting and extruding, the crankshaft fracturing, and the engine seizing.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the failure of the engine crankshaft, which resulted from maintenance personnel’s application of insufficient torque on the engine case through bolts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA562
- Event ID
- 20130926X15937
- Case number
- CEN13LA562
- 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: b38c702bf148ee1bd3c9f5e89bd29869c041aeff975eac8c5a6e6a4bbdbd6eee; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:54:48.599Z.