WPR19LA190 · Cessna P206
Cessna P206 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From Sulphur Creek Ranch Airport (ID74) to Driggs/Reed Memorial Airport (DIJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA190
- 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 P206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N131DV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sulphur Creek Ranch Airport (ID74), Cascade, IDTo Driggs/Reed Memorial Airport (DIJ), Driggs, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a normal preflight and engine run-up, the airplane departed. About 75 ft above ground level (agl), the engine rpm smoothly deteriorated to a total loss of power. The pilot configured the airplane in a nose-low pitch attitude in an attempt to avoid stalling and made an off-airstrip landing. The pilot could not recall his next actions but thought he may have unintentionally turned the fuel selector to the OFF position after the loss of power, thinking he was switching to the other (fuller) wing tank. The airplane collided with the thick brush off the end of the runway and nosed over, coming to rest inverted. During a postaccident examination, investigators found the fuel selector in the OFF position. The engine successfully started and ran during a test run. The postaccident examination revealed no evidence of a malfunction or failure with the engine or airframe that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot did not know the reason for the loss of engine power but opined that he possibly leaned the engine too aggressively for the density altitude.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the pilot’s improper leaning of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA190
- Event ID
- 20190715X31535
- Case number
- WPR19LA190
- 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: cc29ee5f589ca51e72e280ee3818011127765d1aee7e0dabedb464fd5339a237; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:25:09.567Z.