WPR18LA034 · Cessna 172P P
Cessna 172P P · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA034
- 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 172P P
- 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
- N52492
- Operator
- Squadron 2
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CATo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the takeoff for the personal flight, as the airplane reached about 50 ft above ground level, the airplane stopped climbing and the pilot was unable to maintain altitude. When the airplane stopped climbing, the pilot and pilot-rated passenger decided to examine the anomaly further as the pilot began a wide, shallow left turn and attempted to maintain altitude. A video showed that as the airplane completed the turn, it entered a steep bank angle and descended. The airplane's wings leveled out just before the airplane disappeared behind trees and impacted a trailer, trees, and a residence, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings, empennage, and fuselage. Examination of the area revealed that, had the pilot initiated an emergency landing straight ahead rather than troubleshooting the engine problem or attempting to return to the airport, the damage may have been reduced. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed the travel of two of the intake valve rockers was severely limited, the camshaft lobe that supported these intake valves was severely worn and had extensive pitting, and spalling damage was on the faces of the camshaft lifters supporting these intake valves. The decreased travel of the intake valves would have reduced the fuel/air mixture reaching the affected cylinders, thus reducing the overall power the engine could produce. A review of maintenance records revealed that owner had not complied with a manufacturer's mandatory service bulletin requiring a rocker arm inspection. While a service bulletin is not mandatory for Part 91 airplane owners, compliance with the service bulletin might have revealed the limited travel of the rocker arms and prevented the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed decision to execute an emergency landing and his attempt to return to the airport following a partial loss of power due to wear on internal engine components, which prevented the engine from developing full-rated power during the airplane's initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA034
- Event ID
- 20171119X14748
- Case number
- WPR18LA034
- 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: 4e56ede139993caa72432729b4c82ec5e38645f3cfb802192052e8cec07d9170; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:00:59.091Z.