ERA15LA338 · Cessna R172 K
Cessna R172 K · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Republic Airport (FRG) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA338
- 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
- Government
- 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 R172 K
- 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
- N758DK
- Operator
- USCG Auxiliary
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NYTo Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, while the public aircraft flight was in cruise flight about 2,000 ft mean sea level, the airplane's engine stopped producing power. During the subsequent descent, the pilot chose a large open area of several athletic fields for the forced landing. As the airplane approached the fields, the pilot observed that they were in use and that only a small space was available for landing due to people on the ground. The airplane subsequently landed hard and was destroyed during the impact.
Examination of the engine maintenance records revealed that the Nos. 3 and 4 cylinders had been removed and reinstalled 231 hours before the accident. The cylinder flange nuts and through bolts were checked for security and breakaway torque, and several were found below factory specification. Disassembly of the engine revealed metal fragments and bearing material in the oil sump. Disassembly of the crankcase revealed that it was fractured and that the Nos. 1 and 2 main bearings and bearing journals had damage consistent with a loss of lubrication, high heat, and fatigue. It is likely that maintenance personnel did not apply sufficient torque to the cylinder flange nuts and through bolts during the installation of the engine cylinders.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to apply proper torque to the cylinder flange nuts and through bolts during installation of the engine cylinders, which resulted in the loosening of the components, loss of lubrication, failure of the crankshaft, and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA338
- Event ID
- 20150903X34535
- Case number
- ERA15LA338
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 98375e08c99389f100345bc51eb3629ae76a948b504800986004fe930292e805; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:44:47.708Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Misspelled city name; the departure label on the same record reads FRG · Farmingdale, NY.