ERA18LA165 · Cessna 182 A
Cessna 182 A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO) to Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA165
- 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 A
- 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
- N3889D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO), Arecibo, PRTo Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO), Arecibo, PR
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that shortly after takeoff on the skydiving flight, the airplane's engine made a "clicking" sound and lost power. The pilot subsequently performed a forced landing to a field, during which the airplane flipped over and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, right wing, and tail. Examination of the engine revealed the crankcase web mating surfaces at the Nos. 2, 3, and 4 bearing saddles exhibited pitting consistent with fretting, which was indicative of improper preloading (torque) of the through bolts. Additionally, the No. 2 main bearing was displaced from its saddle and severely worn, and the crankshaft fractured due to fatigue. A review of maintenance records revealed the engine's camshaft and lifters were replaced about 280 hours before the accident; this was the last documented time during which the applicable through bolts and associated nuts would have been assembled. Given this information, it is likely that maintenance personnel failed to properly apply torque to these through bolts during this maintenance, which ultimately resulted in the crankshaft failure and the subsequent loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel's failure to properly apply torque to the engine through bolts, which ultimately resulted in the crankshaft failure and the total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA165
- Event ID
- 20180610X02032
- Case number
- ERA18LA165
- 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: d269141cd8f0d258dde6c78fe49e4d8e44fe3db936f087551cb014f2a749c9d9; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:24:45.847Z.