CEN14LA486 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Mankato Regional Airport (MKT) to Breezy Point Airport (8MN3)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA486
- 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
- N22WX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mankato Regional Airport (MKT), Mankato, MNTo Breezy Point Airport (8MN3), Breezy Point, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2002)
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a cross-country personal flight. He reported that, during cruise flight, the airspeed began to decrease, and the engine began to lose power. The pilot attempted to restore engine power but was not successful. He then conducted a forced landing to a road. During the landing roll, the pilot maneuvered the airplane to miss an oncoming car, and the airplane subsequently struck a guy wire, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing.
A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the throttle control lever nut was not torqued to factory specifications in accordance with an engine manufacturer service bulletin (SB). The knurl teeth of both the throttle control lever and shaft displayed signatures of machining with adhesive wear scars on the surfaces. In addition, the surface of the control lever that the nut was normally secured to displayed scoring wear scars. The surface signatures were consistent with the throttle control lever nut not having been properly torqued.
A review of the engine logbook entries revealed that a rebuilt engine was installed on the airplane about 73.1 flight hours before the accident. The mechanics at the repair station who installed the engine, which would have included installing the throttle body and torqueing the throttle control lever nut, reported that they were knowledgeable of the manufacturer SB, and no discrepancies in their procedures were found. Even though the mechanics reported that they were familiar with the SB, it is likely that they did not apply sufficient torque on the throttle control lever nut during the installation of the engine.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to apply sufficient torque on the throttle control lever nut, which resulted in a loss of throttle control and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA486
- Event ID
- 20140908X93210
- Case number
- CEN14LA486
- 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: 74a764c7e21a41ec15d4ec27c0e843a60a6e69065644e54b7aa77dd791b1326f; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:44:06.474Z.