WPR15LA086 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA086
- 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 172N
- 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
- N5660E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HI
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1978)
- 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)
- 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 flight instructor reported that he was performing an introductory flight lesson for a student with her parents on board as passengers. Rather than fly in the normal practice area, the flight instructor and student decided to fly across a channel toward an adjacent island to avoid unfavorable weather conditions. The student flew the majority of the flight following the shoreline until the flight instructor took the flight controls and turned the airplane inland to return to the airport. As the flight instructor flew the airplane over mountainous terrain, the engine lost partial power, and the airplane then began to descend. The flight instructor subsequently performed a forced landing into densely forested terrain. The airplane was not recovered from the accident site, and it could not be examined on site due to the inhospitable and remote terrain; therefore, the reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because the airplane was not recovered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA086
- Event ID
- 20150116X20909
- Case number
- WPR15LA086
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b7c663293256c51a8becc084bceed5db61aa1797ab5d1f771526bea3ab8595d2; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:01:46.013Z.