WPR21LA098 · Cessna T182T
Morey's West Coast Adventures Cessna T182T · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (KMFR) to Jack Mc Namara Field Airport (KCEC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA098
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 T182T
- 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
- N291FR
- Operator
- Morey's West Coast Adventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (KMFR), Medford, ORTo Jack Mc Namara Field Airport (KCEC), Crescent City, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2012)
- 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 · descent
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor noticed a flashing red turbine inlet temperature (TIT) warning light during the flight. He enrichened the fuel mixture, which returned the TIT to normal. Shortly after, the engine began to run rough. The flight instructor switched to the left magneto and the engine lost power. He then switched to the right magneto and the engine continued to run rough. He switched back to both magnetos and the engine continued to run rough. The flight instructor then adjusted the mixture and turned on the auxiliary fuel pump. Despite his actions, he was unable to get the engine to operate at a power setting sufficient to maintain altitude. The flight instructor located an open field and initiated a forced landing. The airplane landed in marshland and nosed over during the landing. The postaccident examination of the engine revealed excessive gap on all sparkplugs and two of the sparkplug electrodes were fouled. The magnetos would not produce spark and had corrosion on their internal components. It was also noted that the pressurized magnetos did not have a moisture trap or filter installed. The magnetos were sent to a facility for further examination, which revealed deformities on both magneto point assembly contact areas and the failure of both magneto capacitors during testing. The failure of the capacitors likely resulted in the deformities on the points surface contact areas resulting in the magnetos not producing sufficient spark for normal operation.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power due to the failure of both magneto capacitors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA098
- Event ID
- 20210201102581
- Case number
- WPR21LA098
- 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: c0cfddec38db21b6700d3ba4f8a7616b86c35f3817e76a192684f10435522868; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:35:24.771Z.