WPR15LA229 · Cessna TU206G
Cessna TU206G · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From B2N · Bozeman, MT to Polson Airport (8S1)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA229
- 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 TU206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N235HM
- Operator
- Dagostino Scott J
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From B2N · Bozeman, MTTo Polson Airport (8S1), Polson, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1984)
- 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)
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting the airplane's first flight since the engine had undergone maintenance several months earlier. He reported that, after about 45 minutes of flight, he noticed that the exhaust gas temperature (EGT) had increased but that he was able to reduce the temperature by increasing the fuel flow. Shortly after, the EGT again increased, and the pilot began to troubleshoot the issue. The pilot stated that, after he turned the electric fuel boost pump on a second time, the engine ran normally for about 2 minutes and then lost power. He determined that the airplane would be unable to reach the airport, so he initiated a forced landing to a road. During the landing roll, the airplane struck vegetation and a fence.
During a postaccident examination of the airplane, blue fuel stains were observed on the top of the engine. The fuel line attached to the fuel flow transducer was found finger tight and leaking. A review of the airplane's maintenance records indicated that, during the maintenance conducted several months before the accident, three cylinders, including the No. 6 cylinder, had been removed and reinstalled. The fuel line attached to the fuel flow transducer was just above the No. 6 cylinder and, therefore, it would been removed to access the cylinder during the maintenance. It is likely that maintenance personnel did not adequately tighten the fuel line during its reinstallation, which led to the loss of fuel pressure and the subsequent loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to tighten a fuel line, which resulted in a loss of fuel pressure and a subsequent loss of engine power during cruise flight and an off-airport landing and collision with obstacles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA229
- Event ID
- 20150803X32456
- Case number
- WPR15LA229
- 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: 4434f173a194da7ce970117b225260c0ae67fe9945ccada6206f6419c5eb410b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:36:43.611Z.