CEN19LA206 · Cessna 140 Undesignat
Cessna 140 Undesignat · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From De Quincy Industrial Airpark (5R8) to St Landry Parish Ahart Field (OPL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA206
- 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 140 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N3725V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From De Quincy Industrial Airpark (5R8), De Quincy, LATo St Landry Parish Ahart Field (OPL), Opelousas, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 71 years (built 1948)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he landed to refuel and take a break, during which time he also added engine oil. About 15 minutes after departing, he noticed that the engine oil pressure reading had dropped to about 0 pounds per square inch (psi) from 30 psi about 1 minute earlier. Due to the wooded terrain over which the airplane was flying, the pilot elected to make a precautionary landing to a nearby clearing. During the landing, the right wing strut impacted a fence post and the airplane bounced and nosed over, resulting in substantial damage. While examining the airplane after the accident, the pilot found that the oil filler cap/dipstick was loose. Based on the information provided by the pilot, the accident was the result of his failure to ensure that the oil filler cap was properly secured, which resulted in loss of the oil supply and necessitated the precautionary off-airport landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to secure the oil filler cap, which resulted in oil starvation and a precautionary off-airport landing, during which the airplane was substantially damaged.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA206
- Event ID
- 20190704X63124
- Case number
- CEN19LA206
- 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, coordinates. 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: 949d2470558f380bd362e44b8d04143e7e1411d85e94a52cf7c211f4557adbb5; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:22:21.487Z.