CEN18LA051 · Cessna 172C
Cessna 172C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Algona Municipal Airport (AXA) to Eagle Grove Municipal Airport (EAG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA051
- 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 172C
- 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
- N8856B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Algona Municipal Airport (AXA), Algona, IATo Eagle Grove Municipal Airport (EAG), Eagle Grove, IA
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1958)
- 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 (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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff for an instructional flight, when the airplane reached 1,800 ft mean sea level, the student pilot began a left turn toward the destination. Shortly after, the engine went silent and stopped producing power. The flight instructor took control, slowed the airplane, and landed into the wind on a gravel road. During the landing roll, the left wheel caught the edge of the road, and the airplane veered into a ditch, which resulted in substantial damage to the wing and fuselage.
Examination of the airplane revealed that the engine's No. 1 cylinder head had separated at the cylinder head-to-barrel interface. The engine had accumulated 605.9 hours since the last engine overhaul, which was conducted over 23 years before the accident. The engine manufacturer's recommended time between overhaul for the accident engine was 1,800 hours or 12 years. However, it could not be determined if the lack of an overhaul within the manufacturer's recommended overhaul period led to the No. 1 cylinder head separating at the cylinder head-to-barrel interface.
Probable cause
The No. 1 cylinder head separating at the cylinder head-to-barrel interface and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA051
- Event ID
- 20171212X23104
- Case number
- CEN18LA051
- 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, coordinates. 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: 0b1f79d44cf383998cfab10c23ad0acd257be52a313c125f1a77b0d3a8d8bdcf; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:07:58.051Z.