ERA18LA259 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J) to Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA259
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N6469P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J), Palatka, FLTo Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN), Ormond Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1981)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal, cross-country flight. He reported that, when the airplane was about 12 miles from the departure airport, the engine started running roughly, and the airplane was "violently shaking." He decided to conduct a forced landing in a field, during which the nose landing gear dug into the soft ground, and the airplane flipped over.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 4 cylinder exhaust valve was fractured, and although the head of the exhaust valve was not recovered, the fracture features on the exhaust valve stem were consistent with fatigue. A review of maintenance records revealed that the exhaust valves were installed during an overhaul of the engine about 28 years before the accident. The engine manufacturer recommended that the engine be overhauled every 12 years or 2,400 hours, whichever comes first.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power due to a fractured exhaust valve, which resulted in a forced landing on unsuitable terrain and a subsequent rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA259
- Event ID
- 20180908X20206
- Case number
- ERA18LA259
- 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: 86a1176fd152fa161855b31784795a3b7a3a1d14beb3839cfe8982cfd91468f0; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:13:25.047Z.