ERA17LA019 · Cessna 182 T
Cessna 182 T · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Destin Executive Airport (DTS) to McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport (MKL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA019
- 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 182 T
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N65903
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Destin Executive Airport (DTS), Destin, FLTo McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport (MKL), Jackson, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, about 3 hours into a cross-country flight, an instrument panel warning sounded and the oil pressure indicator was in the red arc; however, the engine continued to run smoothly. The pilot began to look for airports or fields to divert to and notified air traffic control of the abnormal engine indication. A few minutes later, the pilot heard "clanging" noises from the engine and it subsequently lost partial power. The engine was not producing enough power for the airplane to fly to the destination airport, and the pilot performed a forced landing in a field. During the forced landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage. Examination of the engine revealed that the No. 3 cylinder exhaust valve had stuck in the closed position, which resulted in failure of the cylinder's valvetrain components, breach of the rocker box cover, and the engine's oil supply being exhausted through the breached rocker box cover. The resulting oil starvation subsequently resulted in a partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A stuck No. 3 cylinder exhaust valve, which resulted in failure of the cylinder's valvetrain components, breach of the cylinder's rocker box cover, and partial loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA019
- Event ID
- 20161018X55428
- Case number
- ERA17LA019
- 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: 2bce7c805ee7db6eb703068742f45ff266fc35ecc4e5600314495d8a5fd0f292; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:25:41.520Z.