CEN19LA060 · Stinson 108 1
Stinson 108 1 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Waupaca Municipal Airport (PCZ) to Ford Airport (IMT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA060
- 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
Stinson 108 1
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N97969
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waupaca Municipal Airport (PCZ), Waupaca, WITo Ford Airport (IMT), Iron Mountain Kingsford, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1946)
- 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 (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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal flight; while in cruise flight, the engine experienced a momentary and substantial loss of rpm. The pilot moved the mixture to the full-rich position, turned on the carburetor heat, and switched to the right fuel tank. The engine recovered power, and the pilot left the carburetor heat on for about 3 minutes and then slowly turned it off. About 2 minutes later, the engine lost all power. The pilot activated the starter, but it did not engage. The pilot chose to execute a forced landing on a road, during which the airplane impacted trees, bounced, and then came to rest inverted on a snow-covered embankment. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The temperature and dewpoint at the time of the accident were not conducive for the formation of carburetor icing. The airplane had an adequate amount of fuel onboard at the time of the accident. Therefore, the reason for the loss of all engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during cruise flight for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a forced landing and subsequent impact with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA060
- Event ID
- 20190121X01656
- Case number
- CEN19LA060
- 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: eb77b128fd1d56077b70075865437965da5c80c8fe68f7fbdcfe37b272f356d1; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:33:07.619Z.