WPR20LA068 · Cessna 172Q P
Cessna 172Q P · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL) to Big Timber Airport (6S0)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA068
- 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 172Q P
- 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
- N96145
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MTTo Big Timber Airport (6S0), Big Timber, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1983)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot departed on an instructional flight to a nearby airport in dark night conditions. After an uneventful inbound flight, the student pilot configured the airplane to land, but then elected to perform a go-around due to the airplane’s high altitude during the approach. The instructor instead asked the student pilot to overfly the runway. After the airplane reached the departure end of the runway, the student pilot started a climb; as the airplane was passing 250 ft above ground level (agl), the engine lost power, followed by vibration-induced noise. The instructor took control of the airplane and turned the airplane back towards the airport as he struggled to maintain airspeed. The airplane subsequently impacted frozen ground during the descent and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. Both the instructor and student pilot reported a loss of engine power and an abnormal sound described by the instructor as a vibration-induced noise. The instructor later recalled that the airplane lost all power, which could not be confirmed because evidence obtained from the propeller examination suggested the propeller was likely rotating under power at the time of impact. The reason for the loss of power, the vibration-induced noise, and amount of power produced by the engine at the time of impact could not be determined due to lack of available evidence and postimpact damage.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during climbout for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA068
- Event ID
- 20200121X51450
- Case number
- WPR20LA068
- 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 2020-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5bbad177a8a20fd994808620368ae802aa1b1b94886c18147ccd02ab9744d685; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:58:21.112Z.