ERA17LA044 · Cessna 152
Dean International Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL) to Miami Executive Airport (TMB)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA044
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N94292
- Operator
- Dean International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FLTo Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1982)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, during the instructional flight to accumulate flight time, the airplane experienced a rough-running engine in cruise flight and that the engine subsequently experienced a total loss of power. The pilot tried to restart the engine to no avail. He then chose to conduct a forced landing to a road, during which the airplane touched down on soft, wet ground before reaching the road. It then nosed over and came to rest inverted.
During recovery of the airplane, large cracks were noted in the engine crankcase near the No. 2 cylinder. Disassembly of the engine revealed that the crankshaft was fractured at the No. 3 connecting rod journal and exhibited signatures consistent with extreme heat. The No. 3 connecting rod bolts fractured at the point where the nuts contacted the connecting rod. Each connecting rod nut had a flat-face side and a raised-lip side. As found, the nuts were oriented with the raised-lip side touching the connecting rod despite the engine manufacturer's service instruction, which stated that "Nuts [were] to be assembled with flat face side touching the connecting rod." The caution associated with the orientation of the connecting rod nuts at installation stated that "the connecting rod bolt cannot be tightened correctly if the nut on the connecting rod is installed incorrectly." The operator's maintenance personnel likely installed the nuts incorrectly during an engine overhaul about 246 flight hours before the accident flight, which resulted in a loss of torque on the connecting rod's nuts and the subsequent fracture of the connecting rod's bolts and total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of torque on the No. 3 connecting rod’s nuts, which resulted in the failure of the No. 3 connecting rod’s bolts and a subsequent total loss of engine power due to the operator's maintenance personnel’s improper installation of the connecting rod nuts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA044
- Event ID
- 20161115X91001
- Case number
- ERA17LA044
- 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: afb12e1e605aed7b311c97c6d6356b3fba0a1fc57955bcd37804b4a532bf3a05; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:50:17.509Z.