WPR15LA014 · Cessna 172S
Sohail Air Ventures Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO) to Big Bear, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA014
- 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 172S
- 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
- N612SP
- Operator
- Sohail Air Ventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CATo Big Bear, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2000)
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight during daytime visual meteorological conditions over mountainous terrain. He reported that, about 30 minutes into the flight, the engine began to lose power. The airplane descended into a box canyon, and the pilot then attempted to maneuver the airplane to initiate a 180-degree turn out of the canyon toward lower terrain. The airplane continued to descend, and the stall warning horn sounded, so the pilot decided to land in trees.
First responders reported that the wing fuel tanks were breached and that fuel had drained out through holes in the wings. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA014
- Event ID
- 20141016X82640
- Case number
- WPR15LA014
- 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: 917c9c50d8f71c0a8eb37cd9fa310ef3fbeb8d8cc12851aebf36cc6b0784c62a; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:51:38.543Z.