CEN15LA416 · Cessna R172
Cessna R172 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Thompson Field (1TA7) to Mustang Beach Airport (KRAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA416
- 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 R172
- 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
- N180CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thompson Field (1TA7), Canton, TXTo Mustang Beach Airport (KRAS), Port Aransas, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- 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 power plant
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, during cruise flight, he heard a loud "pop or bang" and that the airplane started vibrating. The engine subsequently lost power. During the forced landing to a road, the airplane struck a building and then a truck.
An examination of the engine found two holes in the crankcase. Further examination revealed that the No. 1 connecting rod had failed due to fatigue. The engine manufacturer had previously issued a service bulletin (SB), which recommended the examination and potential replacement of the connecting rods in the accident engine due to wear or fatigue; the SB included both the accident engine's serial number and the connecting rod's forging stamp identification.
The engine manufacturer subsequently revised the SB; the revision excluded the accident engine by serial number but the connecting rods were still included. However, it would not be possible for a mechanic to identify the connecting rod serial numbers without taking the engine apart. A review of the maintenance records revealed that the accident engine was last overhauled about 5 years after the issuance of the revised SB; no entry was found indicating that the connecting rods were examined in accordance with the SB, and no subsequent maintenance occurred that would have allowed for the examination of the connecting rods. However, because this was a Part 91 operation, such an inspection was not mandatory. Despite the fact that the SB was not mandatory, because the manufacturer removed the engine serial number from the revised SB, a mechanic would have very little way of knowing whether the connecting rods should be inspected.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to the fatigue failure of the No. 1 connecting rod. Contributing to the accident was the manufacturer’s exclusion of the accident engine (by serial number) in a revision of a service bulletin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA416
- Event ID
- 20150917X83014
- Case number
- CEN15LA416
- 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: da68513a3e556b93ec68e4b6340049bcf1c773dba5dd4c25dbd9e8de0d45e8c4; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:47:13.342Z.