CEN20LA123 · Cessna 182 P
Cessna 182 P · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Columbia-Marion County Airport (0R0) to Picayune Municipal Airport (MJD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA123
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N20847
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia-Marion County Airport (0R0), Columbia, MSTo Picayune Municipal Airport (MJD), Picayune, MS
- Aircraft age
- About 48 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 (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 › Aircraft power plant
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 and passenger were conducting a personal flight when the engine experienced a partial loss of power. The pilot was unable to maintain altitude and made a forced landing to a road. During the forced landing, while turning right to stay on the road, the airplane ground looped and collided with trees, sustaining substantial damage.
Examination of the engine revealed that a portion of the No. 1 cylinder valve head was fractured due to the inward propagation of a radial rim fracture, and the initiation and propagation of a chordal fracture in the filet area perpendicular to the axis of the stem. The initial crack developed at the rim and propagated inward toward the center of the valve head as a radial rim crack. When the crack front reached the fillet region of the head, a second crack initiated and propagated in fatigue as a chordal fracture. A final overstress fracture occurred near the rim. This type of failure is likely due to cyclic uneven expansion and contraction stress cracks that propagate inward, as a result of inadequate valve seating.
The engine maintenance records showed that a repaired No. 1 cylinder was installed on May 9, 2014. The partial maintenance release stated that the cylinder repair process included refaced valves and three angle cut valve seats. There were no other entries related to the No. 1 cylinder. The engine had accumulated about 598 hours since the cylinder was installed. Annual inspections were completed every year after this cylinder installation.
Probable cause
The failure of the No. 1 cylinder intake valve due to inadequate valve seating.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA123
- Event ID
- 20200316X60952
- Case number
- CEN20LA123
- 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, 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: 14652e94a4c6aae08cfb5e12c84f2be391a38f0599ab03b5f4e8a053c5c24162; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:18:58.163Z.