ERA18LA228 · Cessna T206 H
Cessna T206 H · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Bangor International Airport (BGR) to Bangor International Airport (BGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA228
- 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
- Government
- 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 T206 H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N35442
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bangor International Airport (BGR), Bangor, METo Bangor International Airport (BGR), Bangor, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was returning after a mission flight when he heard a "bang." The engine then lost power. He declared an emergency with air traffic control and received radar vectors to a nearby airport, but the airplane impacted a heavily wooded marsh about 3/4 mile from the runway, which resulted in serious injury to the pilot and substantial damage to the airplane. Postaccident examination revealed that the No. 4 cylinder exhaust hydraulic roller tappet was fractured and had separated. Further examination of the engine revealed that the No. 4 exhaust camshaft lobe and the corresponding roller tappet were severely worn and damaged. Additionally, the No. 4 exhaust roller tappet body ears, which supported the roller shaft and bearing, were also damaged, and one of the ears had fractured in fatigue. Metallurgical examination showed that the engine components conformed to the manufacturer's specifications. It is likely that the severe wear between the roller and camshaft led to nonstandard loading conditions, the fatigue failure of the roller tappet body ear, the subsequent liberation of the roller and its components, and the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Wear of the No. 4 cylinder exhaust camshaft lobe and roller tappet, which resulted in the failure of the tappet and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA228
- Event ID
- 20180823X31321
- Case number
- ERA18LA228
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-08-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 73d6653454a87097be92a29eef5803d8e089180353c038460dc404093cb52e6f; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:08:34.008Z.