CEN21LA316 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Pierre Regional Airport (KPIR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA316
- 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 172F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N5340R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pierre Regional Airport (KPIR), Pierre, SDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1965)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while in cruise flight, the engine began running rough, and shortly after, lost all power. The pilot executed a forced landing into a wheat field, during which the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and left lift strut. Examination revealed a large hole in the top of the engine case adjacent to the No. 6 cylinder. Further examination revealed that the No. 6 connecting rod failed in fatigue, which resulted in the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the fatigue failure of the No. 6 connecting rod.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA316
- Event ID
- 20210713103461
- Case number
- CEN21LA316
- 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: f4b55fab53d6d2f930d7b5f05012fd42609bd082b7a8d4704a58ceae0c215f83; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:16:48.035Z.