CEN19LA258 · Cessna R172 K
Cessna R172 K · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Hickory Regional Airport (HKY) to Warrenton Fauquier Airport (HWY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA258
- 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 R172 K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N1609V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hickory Regional Airport (HKY), Hickory, NCTo Warrenton Fauquier Airport (HWY), Warrenton, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1976)
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a cross country flight when an oil pressure warning displayed on the airplane’s flight display. The pilot diverted toward another airport but the engine seized enroute. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field, where the airplane hit obstacles and flipped over. Both wings, the empennage, and the fuselage sustained substantial damage. After the accident the engine was examined and determined to have failed due to an oil starvation event. The oil pump drive gear was found failed and had separated from the shaft portion of the gear assembly. The fracture surfaces were examined, and multiple fracture origins were identified. Improvements to the oil pump drive gear were made and a service bulletin was released in 1996 which required the replacement of the drive gear at the next engine overhaul. The engine examination determined that this service bulletin had not been complied with. The maintenance records that were provided only went back two years and covered two annual inspections of the engine. The most recent annual inspection record indicated that the engine had been overhauled and had accumulated 1,975 hours since overhaul. The record of the overhaul was not in the maintenance records received by investigators.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the failure of the oil pump drive gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA258
- Event ID
- 20190808X10905
- Case number
- CEN19LA258
- 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: 4f571db86b87b302b9e09397196118cd1d95b9d4dacf62136e344667c33b238e; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:40:43.707Z.