CEN21LA138 · Cessna 182F
Cessna 182F · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure before flight
From Cassville Municipal Airport (C74) to Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA138
- 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 182F
- 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
- N3209U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cassville Municipal Airport (C74), Cassville, WITo Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
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 stated that, during climb from the departure airport, the engine made a loud growling noise, lost power, and began producing smoke. The pilot then performed a forced landing on a road, during which the airplane nosed over and impacted terrain.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a hole in the crankcase and a failure of two cylinders consistent with oil starvation. The majority of oil residue was located below and aft of the oil breather tube, which was to alleviate normal crankcase pressures. The crankcase nose seal exhibited an oil leak that would have also allowed ram air pressure to pressurize the crankcase above normal pressures and force engine oil out through the oil breather tube resulting in oil starvation/exhaustion. Oil leakage from the crankcase breather tube would have been progressive and not instantaneous. The oil leakage from the crankcase nose seal and breather tube should have been identified by those performing maintenance and/or preflight inspections of the airplane after seeing decreased oil levels, oil residue external to the engine, and seepage from the crankcase nose seal.
Probable cause
The inadequate maintenance/inspection of the airplane, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA138
- Event ID
- 20210225102676
- Case number
- CEN21LA138
- 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: 9a198ffec1238d08b40336ceb349658dc70112d736a31a730d6b1145425a79a4; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:44:50.744Z.