CEN16LA026 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22T
Cirrus Design Corp SR22T · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT) to Waco Regional Airport (ACT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA026
- 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
- 0
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22T
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N857SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT), Bentonville, ARTo Waco Regional Airport (ACT), Waco, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2014)
- 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
- 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
During the enroute climb to cruise altitude, the low oil pressure warning light activated. The pilot notified air traffic control, received vectors to the nearest airport, and began a descent as the oil pressure continued to decrease. About 3 miles from the airport, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot could not see the airport or runway due to a cloud layer below and elected to deploy the airplane parachute system. The airplane descended under canopy to a four-lane road, where a car impacted the left wing. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed a fatigue fracture of the oil cooler cross fitting, which resulted in oil starvation, internal damage to the crankcase, and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
About four months before the accident, the engine manufacturer released a critical service bulletin (CSB) for a known problem pertaining to the oil cooler cross fitting assembly. Although the airplane underwent scheduled maintenance about a month before the accident, the CSB was not completed due to time constraints. Although compliance was not mandatory, it is likely that the accident would have been prevented had the CSB been completed.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the oil cooler cross fitting, which resulted in engine oil starvation and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA026
- Event ID
- 20151103X33454
- Case number
- CEN16LA026
- 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: f1b4ac8228a926d2ae76ca4ace70454cc716c4d19145165c62a74a57e6f51b7f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:56:32.421Z.