WPR17LA157 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure on approach
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA157
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22
- 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
- N754AP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NVTo Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the personal cross-country flight was uneventful until he was established on the final approach about 7 miles from the destination airport. At that point, he heard a bang, felt a shudder from the engine, and noticed the airplane’s oil pressure decreasing. Shortly thereafter, the oil pressure indicated zero and the engine shut down. Unable to maintain altitude and too low to deploy the airplane’s parachute, the pilot decided to land on a nearby open field. During the landing sequence, the airplane’s left wing struck two wood posts, incurring substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane’s engine revealed that the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve head was separated from the valve stem, which destroyed the No. 4 piston causing oil to dump through the No. 4 cylinder’s exhaust valve area. The resulting oil starvation led to catastrophic engine failure. The reason for the failure of the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve head could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve head, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA157
- Event ID
- 20170719X51048
- Case number
- WPR17LA157
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 56183241d631e85a11ab1658e4e2d50d98af9bc483fc2b1cb2f809c8485bbcae; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:33:42.155Z.