WPR20LA042 · Cessna 182 P
Cessna 182 P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT) to McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA042
- 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 182 P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N182EF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CATo McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1972)
- 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 stated that during the flight, the airplane’s engine started to run rough. Despite troubleshooting, the engine roughness increased followed by “flash explosions” from the engine and the smell of oil in the cabin. The engine lost total power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to an interstate highway. The airplane landed hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage.
A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the Nos. 5 and 6 connecting rods separated from the crankshaft. The crankshaft separated into three sections. One of the separations was at the crankshaft cheek forward and adjacent to the No. 3 bearing journal, and the separation surfaces displayed beach marks consistent with fatigue cracking. Metallurgical examination revealed that the fracture appeared to initiate below the outer nitride layer near an oxide inclusion within the metal.
The engine was overhauled and converted from the original Continental O-470-U engine to a PPA O-470-50 engine per a supplemental type certificate (STC). Additionally, a supercharger was installed on the engine, which was not part of the engine conversion STC. No logbook entries were found regarding the installation of the supercharger. It is likely that the installation of the supercharger contributed additional stress to the crankshaft during operation, which resulted in the separation of the crankshaft and subsequent catastrophic engine failure.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the crankshaft. Contributing to the accident was the undocumented installation of the supercharger, which resulted in increased stress on the crankshaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA042
- Event ID
- 20191213X05304
- Case number
- WPR20LA042
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-12-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ec7476bc2c548b81cfff1f0df77fa38481b23d2908e61ad12b4ad08151637e61; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:45:45.203Z.