CEN16LA297 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Wittman Regional Airport (OSH) to Morris Municipal Airport James R. Washburn field (C09)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA297
- 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 172F
- 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
- N211FC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WITo Morris Municipal Airport James R. Washburn field (C09), Morris, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight when the airplane had a partial loss of engine power during cruise flight. The pilot stated that the engine continued to run but that there was an excessive vibration and significant loss of power. The pilot's corrective actions did not restore normal engine operation, and he made a forced landing in a nearby field. The airplane's nose landing gear collapsed when it impacted a berm during the landing roll, and the airplane came to rest in a nose-down attitude with structural damage to the lower fuselage.
A postaccident engine examination revealed a failure of the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve. About 1/2 of the No. 4 exhaust valve was located during the examination, and the recovered portions exhibited significant impact damage. The failure of the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve would have resulted in a significant loss of engine power during the flight. The engine had accumulated 2,146.9 hours since its last major overhaul, which was completed more than 27 years before the accident. According to available maintenance documentation, the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve had not been repaired or replaced since the last major overhaul. According to the engine manufacturer, the recommended time between overhaul (TBO) is every 1,800 hours or 12 years, whichever occurs first; however, the operator was not required to comply with the recommended TBO interval under current regulations due to the type of operation.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power and a forced landing. Contributing to the valve failure and loss of engine power was the extended time since the last overhaul.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA297
- Event ID
- 20160802X20737
- Case number
- CEN16LA297
- 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: e383e293f7befbd332c177826d5a1ad1487aadf1055a4b4fb7a11ef8bcd2e82e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:43:58.783Z.