CEN15LA180 · Cessna 208B
Cessna 208B · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Tulsa International Airport (TUL) to Tulsa International Airport (TUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA180
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N106BZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa International Airport (TUL), Tulsa, OKTo Tulsa International Airport (TUL), Tulsa, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1988)
- 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 · climb to 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the postmaintenance test flight, the turboprop engine lost power. The airplane was unable to maintain altitude, and the pilot conducted a forced landing, during which the airplane was substantially damaged.
The engine had about 9 total flight hours at the time of the accident. A teardown of the fuel pump revealed that the high-pressure drive gear teeth exhibited wear and that material was missing from them, whereas the driven gear exhibited little to no visible wear. A metallurgical examination of the gears revealed that the damaged drive gear was made of a material similar to 300-series stainless steel instead of the harder specified M50 steel, whereas the driven gear was made of a material similar to the specified M50 steel. Subsequent to these findings, the airplane manufacturer determined that the gear manufacturer allowed three set-up gears made from 300-series stainless steel to become part of the production inventory during the manufacturing process. One of those gears was installed in the fuel pump on the accident airplane, and the location of the two other gears could not be determined. Based on the evidence, it is likely that the nonconforming gear installed in the fuel pump failed because it was manufactured from a softer material than specified, which resulted in a loss of fuel flow to the engine and the subsequent loss of engine power.
The manufacturer subsequently inspected its stock of gears and issued notices to customers that had engines with fuel pumps installed with the same part number gear set as the one installed on the accident airplane. The manufacturer also issued a service information letter and service bulletins regarding the fuel pump gear set for engines used in civilian and military applications. As of the date of this report, the two remaining gears have not been located.
Probable cause
The fuel pump gear manufacturer’s allowance of set-up gears made from a nonconforming material to be put in the production inventory system, the installation of a nonconforming gear in the accident airplane’s production fuel pump, and the gear’s failure, which resulted in a loss of fuel flow to the engine and the subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA180
- Event ID
- 20150325X70035
- Case number
- CEN15LA180
- 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: 5ba3b2f27a0b8c6e4853805c46f338f783f8a24733620e0bc51a2d094c0a55e5; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:10:53.157Z.