CEN17LA006 · Cessna 172K
Cessna 172K · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Burlington Municipal Airport (BUU) to Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA006
- 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 172K
- 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
- N46377
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burlington Municipal Airport (BUU), Burlington, WITo Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), Wheeling, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 stated that the engine experienced a partial loss of power shortly after takeoff on the local flight. In an effort to regain power, the pilot switched fuel tanks, applied carburetor heat, and richened the fuel mixture, but the engine continued to operate at reduced power. The pilot attempted to land at a nearby airport; however, he overshot the runway and decided to perform a forced landing to an adjacent cornfield. During the landing, the right wing impacted the corn, and the airplane came to rest upright.
Partial disassembly of the engine revealed a failure of the No. 1 piston pin plug due to corrosion in the No. 1 cylinder barrel. The plug failure resulted in significant oil contamination and subsequent oil starvation and damage to the crankshaft connecting rod bearings. The damage to the bearings resulted in the partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A failure of the No. 1 piston pin plug due to corrosion in the cylinder barrel, which resulted in oil contamination, oil starvation to the crankshaft connecting rod bearings, and a subsequent partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA006
- Event ID
- 20161005X10124
- Case number
- CEN17LA006
- 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: 4aba205406ff5c08e551728b8bade82a1efe3115b1366482167dc3684e0aeb0e; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:21:09.027Z.