CEN20LA360 · Cessna 180 UNDESIGNAT
Casement Cessna 180 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Creve Coeur Airport (1H0) to A Paul Vance Fredericktown Regional Airport (H88)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA360
- 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 180 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N7620A
- Operator
- Casement
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Creve Coeur Airport (1H0), St Louis, MOTo A Paul Vance Fredericktown Regional Airport (H88), Fredericktown, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the pilot reported hearing a loud “pop,” and the engine suddenly lost power. The pilot executed a forced landing toward a lacrosse field surrounded by residences. The airplane impacted terrain in a nose-down attitude, which substantially damaged both wings and seriously injured the pilot.
A postaccident examination revealed that the carburetor mixture control cable was disconnected from the carburetor control lever at the carburetor, with the attachment hardware (bolt, nut, and washer stack) still attached to the carburetor. No other anomalies were found that would have precluded normal operation.
Laboratory analysis of the mixture control cable and attachment hardware (bolt, nut, and washer stack) determined that the hardware was used repeatedly in numerous configurations, and the cable did not have a kink at the end indicating it had not been bent. The maintenance manual specified that the cable was to be bent 90 degrees after being threaded through the bolt hole to help secure the cable, and not doing so likely contributed to the cable becoming disconnected from the carburetor control lever inflight.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to improper maintenance of the mixture control cable and attachment hardware, which led to a forced landing into a congested area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA360
- Event ID
- 20200824X94858
- Case number
- CEN20LA360
- 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: 48c57db1b51e35819ed9dcb47ee52351836cfb95436ff4e25b11e89d5fbc3634; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:55:37.982Z.