CEN19LA204 · Waco YMF-5C
Waco YMF-5C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (KBHB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA204
- 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
Waco YMF-5C
- Aircraft type
- Waco YMF-5
- 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
- N63WC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (KBHB), Trenton, METo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 15 minutes into the air tour flight, the pilot heard a loud “crack/bang” from the front of the airplane, followed by a total loss of engine power. The pilot performed a forced landing to wet, marshy terrain, during which the left wing impacted a tree and the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the wings.
One of the radial engine’s cylinders was fractured at the barrel head joint, which resulted in the loss of engine power. The airplane was operated without engine cowling installed. According to the airplane’s owner, the cowling assists with engine cooling in vintage radial engines. The airplane was not examined after the accident and the reason for the cylinder failure was not determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to a cylinder failure for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA204
- Event ID
- 20190703X93256
- Case number
- CEN19LA204
- 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: a2eb620744b998ebfb895b035e5944b83c667cd16ab2afec0dda8138bffec918; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:22:05.000Z.