ERA19LA006 · Cessna 205 A
Cessna 205 A · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Hefner Easley Airport (H68) to Hefner Easley Airport (H68)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA006
- 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 205 A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 205
- 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
- N8495Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hefner Easley Airport (H68), Wagoner, OKTo Hefner Easley Airport (H68), Wagoner, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
During a post maintenance flight after the airplane's annual inspection, the pilot made about three circuits around the airport area before departing to continue flight maneuvers and performance checks. He started a left turn and then noticed a “very minor engine mis[fire]." As the pilot continued the turn, the "engine mis[fire]" began to increase and the engine began to shake. The airplane was unable to maintain altitude and was descending about 150-300 ft per minute. Although the pilot made multiple attempts to regain engine power, the engine lost total power. The airplane impacted trees and brush; during the landing sequence, the left and right wings buckled.
Following the accident, an engine run was performed; after running for 13 minutes, the engine lost power. Troubleshooting of the magnetos found that the right magneto was firing erratically. The right magneto was replaced with a known-good magneto and the engine was subsequently successfully test run at full power. More detailed testing of both magnetos revealed that they failed the manufacturer’s acceptance test procedures due to excessive point gaps and secondary coil resistance. A review of the engine logbooks revealed the magneto points and condensers were replaced about 18 years and about 230 flight hours before the accident flight. Given the available information, it is likely that maintenance personnel did not perform proper maintenance of the magnetos.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper maintenance of the magnetos, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA006
- Event ID
- 20181005X75759
- Case number
- ERA19LA006
- 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, cause areas. 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: 253487a2dc00fc20bd2d745c8d00f3b1247076d52f7744191b173a578f246c25; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:18:38.484Z.