ERA21LA188 · Cessna A188 B
Eastern Flying Services Cessna A188 B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Dover, NC (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA188
- 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 A188 B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N731TB
- Operator
- Eastern Flying Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dover, NC (private airstrip)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1978)
- 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 (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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed to familiarize himself with the airplane and to practice maneuvers. A few minutes after takeoff, at an altitude of about 300 ft, he heard a “loud pop,” and the engine lost total power. He looked at the engine gauges and noticed that there was “no fuel flow.” As the propeller windmilled, he unsuccessfully attempted to restart the engine, then elected to perform a forced landing to a nearby corn field. He stated that the landing was “hard.” The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing, right horizontal stabilizer, and elevator. Examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft No. 2 main bearing had spun, smearing metal into the oil ports on the bearing bore and deforming the bore. Numerous fragments of bearing material were found in the oil sump and inside the case adjacent to the Nos. 1 and 2 cylinders. Based on the available information, it is likely that the shift of the No. 2 main bearing resulted in a lack of lubrication and subsequent failure of the engine crankshaft. The reason for the bearing shift was not determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to a shift of a crankshaft main bearing, which resulted in a lack of lubrication and subsequent overheating and failure of the engine crankshaft. Contributing to the accident was the hard touchdown during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA188
- Event ID
- 20210419102935
- Case number
- ERA21LA188
- 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: ba60fbd3895ec38b508d189a88f6ee82b4214aabe96e5175594573b97bb7f222; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:57:45.830Z.