WPR14LA207 · Cessna 182 Q
Cessna 182 Q · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Corona Municipal Airport (KAJO) to KPVT · Porterville, CA
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
- WPR14LA207
- 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 182 Q
- 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
- N97038
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Corona Municipal Airport (KAJO), Corona, CATo KPVT · Porterville, CA
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, while in cruise flight, he noticed that the engine oil pressure had dropped. He declared an emergency and was initially given a heading to the closest airport. About 2-3 minutes later, he heard rattling noises from the engine, then the cabin filled with black smoke. He identified an open field and maneuvered for a forced landing. The airplane hit a berm and bounced, hitting several more berms, until it came to rest inverted. On-scene photographs showed that the belly of the airplane was coated with engine oil aft of the engine firewall. An engine examination identified that the air-oil separator return line was not connected to the return port located on a cylinder rocker cover. Maintenance records showed that the pilot had performed an oil change 4.3 hours before the accident. Since the oil filter is located behind the air-oil separator return line, it is likely that the pilot removed the air-oil separator return line to access the oil filter and failed to reconnect the line after replacing the filter. While in flight, oil slowly drained out of the air-oil separator return line and open return port, coating the belly of the airplane, until the engine experienced catastrophic failure due to oil starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to reconnect the air-oil separator return line after completing an oil change, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA207
- Event ID
- 20140524X63615
- Case number
- WPR14LA207
- 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: c6c462acf7dea8f24f8f54b527a35cda0a722750ea6f7cab56cd51d1934fd5e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:39:48.745Z.