CEN15LA243 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Western Neb. Rgnl/William B. Heilig Airport (BFF) to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA243
- 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 TR182
- 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
- N4645T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Western Neb. Rgnl/William B. Heilig Airport (BFF), Scottsbluff, NETo Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB), Lubbock, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1981)
- 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 airline transport pilot was conducting a personal, cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, while in cruise flight and as he was preparing to descend the airplane, the engine experienced a reduction in power. The pilot's attempts to troubleshoot the power reduction power were unsuccessful. Due to the reduced available power, the airplane was unable to reach an airport, so the pilot conducted a forced landing to a field. During the landing, the nose landing gear dug into the soft terrain, and the airplane nosed over.
Postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any anomalies. During a subsequent engine test run, the engine operated normally with no anomalies noted. Weather conditions on the ground at the time of the accident were conducive to moderate carburetor icing at cruise power settings; however, the temperature and dew point at 9,000 ft, the altitude at which the initial power loss occurred, could not be determined. The reason for the engine power loss could not be determined.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA243
- Event ID
- 20150529X50810
- Case number
- CEN15LA243
- 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 2015-05-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e6c525da12384965c1016fab1022ba96a9d1145fd653f38528dd07e4ae2fb14e; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:22:09.128Z.